Picture this: book banning is rampant, huge screens playing mindless slop dominate home living rooms, and people would rather zone out with drugs and entertainment than deal with the world around them. Those aren’t (just) the week’s biggest headlines; they’re key elements of the 21st-century society Ray Bradbury predicted way back in 1951.

You probably know Fahrenheit 451 as the book in which firemen don’t put out fires but start them in homes where people are found to be hiding books. Yes, and: in the future Bradbury imagined, book bans were a symptom, not the disease itself.

This classic novel is about intellectual freedom, the ties between authoritarianism and addictive technology, and the siren song of thinking for yourself.

🔥 Get fired up to revisit one of our most important—and most frequently banned—books with the crew at Zero to Well-Read. And for a bit of extra credit, here’s some related book nerd trivia.

Bradbury’s short story “The Rocket Man” inspired Elton John’s hit song of the same name.

A. The Book People

B. Burn, Baby, Burn

C. The Fireman

D. Fahrenheit 232.778

Bradbury wrote the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 at the UCLA library on a coin-operated typewriter that cost 10 cents per half hour to use, costing him a total of $9.80.

A. earbuds

B. short form video

C. parasocial relationships

D. cryptocurrency

E. ATMs

F. televised fugitive chases

Bradbury once met Robert Heinlein’s son on a bus ride; he expressed that Bradbury was one of his favorite science fiction writers, not knowing he was speaking to the author in the flesh.

In the episode, Jeff asks if Fahrenheit 451 is the best novel with a number in its title—if we exclude titles where the numbers are years (because duh, 1984). Some of Jeff’s favorites include Catch-22 and The Three Musketeers. Excellent choices.

I’m not here to name the best titles, but I did try to rattle off a bunch of contenders, with a self-imposed rule of my own: no titles with adjective numerals. Sorry to Billy Shakes for Twelfth Night and Richard III, and to the inimitable N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season.

Classics:

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Modern classics, bestsellers, buzzy books, etc:

• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Some of my personal favorites:

• One by One by Ruth Ware
• Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
• 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
• The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

Which number titles are your favorites? Email us at [email protected].

Answer Key:

1. True
2. C
3. True
4. D
5. False – It was another author’s son he met that day. And don’t you dare cheat and Google which one – listen to the episode to find out!

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