Books Ablaze

I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451, one of those books everyone has to read in school but I somehow missed it. Actually I missed a lot of the classics, so I'm filling in the gaps in my education bit by bit.

It's pretty good - the writing is old-fashioned and a little clunky, with characters often behaving unrealistically for the sake of high drama, but there are some great themes about government oversight of individual lives, and the choice between living in a simplistic, black-and-white world and a more challenging spectrum of grays. Some of the descriptions are also pretty good. Here's one I like:

"The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain...They walked in the warm-cool blowing night on the silvered pavement and there was the faintest breath of fresh apricots and strawberries in the air."

And another one - the eyes of a woman who has overdosed on sleeping pills:

"Two pale moonstones buried in a creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them."

And another one:

"The blowing of a single autumn leaf.
"He turned and the Mechanical Hound was there.
"It was half across the lawn, coming from the shadows, moving with such drifting ease that it was like a single solid cloud of black-grey smoke blown at him in silence."

And the last one, as he's walking in the forest at night:

"A deer. He smelled the heavy musk like perfume mingled with blood and the gummed exhalation of the animal's breath, all cardamom and moss and ragweed odor in this huge night...
"There must have been a billion leaves on the land; he waded in them, a dry river smelling of hot cloves and warm dust. And the other smells! There was a smell like a cut potato from all the land, raw and cold and white from having the moon on it most of the night. There was a smell like pickles from a bottle and a smell like parsley on the table at home. There was a faint yellow odor like mustard from a jar. There was a smell like carnations from the yard next door. He put down his hand and felt a weed rise up like a child brushing him. His fingers smelled of licorice."

I bet it was Queen Anne's Lace, they really do smell like licorice.