Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Narrated By: Tim Robbins
Release Date: October 21, 2014
Publisher: Audible Studios
Genre: Science Fiction, Classic
Running Time: Unabridged 5 hrs and 1 min
Source: Received from Publisher
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Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of 20th-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future, narrated here by Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins.
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family”. But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.
Just in time for your Thanksgiving travels, Audible Studios has released a new audiobook version of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 narrated by Academy-Award-winner Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption) produced by Audible Studios in association with the Bradbury Estate.
Tim Robbins does an exceptional job narrating this classic which I had never read before now. I felt the suspense, the inquisitive minds of each character and I was engrossed in this beautifully thought provoking tale all thanks to Bradbury’s fine writing and Robbins’s wonderful job taking his words and bringing them to life in a way that I may not have experienced while reading them on the page. I love his tone and the fluid inflections Robbins gives for each character. I love that I was never lost in the narration and always engrossed in the words. Whether I closed my eyes or not, I could easily envision the world and all that was happening.
How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?
As for the story itself, I loved the characters. They were all so captivating and fascinating. I’m so mad I didn’t read this in school! I’d much rather have read this than some of the other titles I had to read. There’s so much more depth here. So much more meaning. So much more heart. In the characters, the relationships (no matter how strained), in the story. I love this story. It’s so telling about so much.
It’s a telling story about hope and death, fear and joy for the known and unknown, risks and challenging what we know as truth, awareness, knowledge, and power, freedom, control, and surrendering. Being fulfilled instead of relying on false security. Censorship is just the beginning of all of these issues and it was such a treat to be able to see what happens in a world that takes what we know to such an extreme. It’s frightening and empowering all at the same time. I really enjoyed this and think you will too if you have yet to read this. What are you waiting for?
Other Bradbury titles also newly available are Something Wicked This Way Comes, narrated by Christian Rummel, and The Martian Chronicles, narrated by Mark Boyett, as well as a new recording by Jonathan Davis of the Bradbury story “The Playground,” which was part of the original hardcover edition of Fahrenheit 451. To download any of these audiobooks, visit audible.com/bradbury.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is available on Audible today.