Suggestions for Additional Reading

Fahrenheit 451 Readalikes:

If you liked Fahrenheit 451, here are some suggestions for addition reading, compiled by Kate Skinner, reference librarian at Kitsap Regional Library. The list is sorted by topical area, with specific suggestions for teens and young people at the end.

All of these books are available through Kitsap Regional Library. Pay us a visit - in person and online at http://www.krl.org/

Censorship:

Byatt, A.S. - Babel Tower
A rich, intense, multilayerd exploration of the notion of freedom in a new world order.

Dai, Sijie - Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the novel tells the story of two hapless city boys sent to a remote mountain village for reeducation. A beguiling fable that shines with the wonder of imagination, the beauty of romance, and the power of storytelling

Fforde, Jasper - The Eyre Affair
Welcome to a zany surreal version of virtual police-state Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously.

Hrabal, Bohumil - Too Loud a Solitude
Set in Old Town Prague, this is a dark and troubling exploration of passion, beauty, high moral stakes in the midst of a crumbling civilization.

Kundera, Milan – The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Rich in stories, characters and imaginative range, written while Kundera was still forbidden to publish in his home country of Czechoslovakia, which was then behind the Iron Curtain. Different aspects of modern existence -- from the posthumous erasure of "enemies" of communism from the historical record, to the subtle agony of the fading memory of a lost love, to the bizarre sexlessness of modern promiscuity -- are explored with boldness, subversive humor and the magical power of fiction.

Kundera, Milan – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Set in Czechoslovakia in the 1960's, the story revolves around a young doctor who has a way with women and an aversion to politics. He suddenly finds himself caught up in his country's political turmoil and in a crisis of commitment with the women in his life.

Nafisi, Azar - Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books (a true account)
The personal and intellectual unfoldings of a private literature class in the mid nineties, in Tehran where a group of seven women, children of the revolution, greatly diverse in religious and political beliefs and backgrounds, take off their chadors and scarves to talk about books.

Dystopias:

Atwood, Margaret - The Handmaid's Tale
Set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, exploring themes of the subjugation of women against the backdrop of a totalitarian theocratic society.

Atwood, Margaret – Oryx and Crake
Examines the collapse of civilization with science and technology amidst a culture of extreme commercialization and commodification of all life.

Brin, David - Glory Season
A moving, satirical and finally transcendent tale of the human spirit at a time when all must come face to face with their glory season.

Brin, David - The Postman
Gordon Krantz survived the Doomwar only to spend years crossing a post-apocalypse United States looking for something or someone he could believe in again.

Burgess, Anthony - A Clockwork Orange
When the freedom of individuals to make choices undermines the safety and stability of society, the state is willing to protect society by taking away freedom of choice and replacing it with prescribed good behavior.

Coetzee, J.M. - Waiting for the Barbarians
An analogy of all men living in complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency by means of the fall from grace of an unexceptional magistrate of the Empire.

Dunn, Mark - Ella Minnow Pea
A political allegory presenting ideas about totalitarianism, good citizenship, freedom of speech and the heart of religion presented in quotation and letter format.

Elgin, Suzette Hadin - Native Tongue
Focussing on female characters and treating traditional themes of oppression in new and creative ways.

Gibson, William – Neuromancer
Case, an out-of-work computer hacker is hired by a mysterious patron to participate in a seemingly impossible crime. Examines the concepts of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genetic engineering, multinational corporations overpowering the traditional nation-state and cyberspace.

Gibson, William - Burning Chrome
A collection of short stories mostly taking place in Sprawl, the anonymous, shared setting for most of his cyberpunk work.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins – Herland
Written in 1915, describing an isolated society composed entirely of Aryan women who reproduce via parthenogenesis to produce an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination.

Golding, William – Lord of the Flies
A group of schoolboys marooned on a tropical island forge their own society to reveal essential humanity: innocent and corrupt, noble and cruel.

Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
ew World First published in 1932, a terrifying vision of a controlled and emotionless future society startling in its prediction of modern scientific and cultural phenomena, including test-tube babies and rampant drug abuse.

Kafka, Franz - The Castle
A dark and surreal, novel about alienation, bureaucracy, and the seemingly endless frustrations of an individual’s attempts to stand against the system.

London, Jack - The Iron Heel
A 1908 prophetic novel of the twentieth century.

McCullough, Colleen - Creed for the Third Millennium
Tomorrow's America is a cold and ravaged place, devastated by despair and enduring winter. In a small New England city, senior government official Dr. Judith Carriol finds the man she has been seeking: a deliverer of hope in a hopeless time who can revive the dreams of a shattered people--a healer who must ultimately face damnation through the destructive power of love.

McMullen, Sean - The Greatwinter Trilogy: Souls in the Great Machine, The Miocene Arrow, Eyes of the Calculor
In the 4th millennium war rages with new found technologies.

Orwell, George - Animal Farm
The classic political fable of the dangers of individuality to an oppressive political order.

Orwell, George – 1984
A harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare.

Piercy, Marge - Woman on the Edge of Time
Connie is able to communicate with the year 2137. Two totally different ways of life are competing. One is beautiful - communal, non-sexist, environmentally pure, open to ritual and magic. The other is a horror – totalitarian, exploitative, rigidly technological.

Rand, Ayn – Anthem
Classic tale of a future dark age in a world that deprives individuals of name, independence, and values.

Roth, Philip - The Human Stain
Explores the ambiguous boundaries between truth and falsehood, past and present, perception and reality, and offers a moving meditation on the limits of what we can really know about each other.

Vonnegut, Kurt - Player Piano
Chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. His rebellion is a wildly funny, darkly satirical look at modern society.

Wells, H.G. - A Time Machine
A social parable of time travel where class systems and natural selection combine to create a horrific civilization.

Zamiatin, Evgenii – We
Set in the One State, where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist.

Fahrenheit 451 Readalikes for teens:

Anderson, M.T. - Feed
Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower
Dick, Philip K. - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Golding William - Lord of the Flies
Haddix, Margaret - Among the Hidden
Haddix, Margaret - Among the Imposters
Haddix, Margaret - Running Out of Time
Hentoff, Nat - The Day They Came to Arrest the Book
LeGuin, Ursula - Always Coming Home
LeGuin, Ursula - The Dispossessed
Lowry, Lois - Gathering Blue
Lowry, Lois - The Giver
O'Brien, Robert C. - Z for Zachariah
Peck, Richard - The Last Safe Place on Earth
Pfeffer, Susan Beth - A Matter of Principle
Philbrick, Rodman - The Last Book in the Universe

Fahrenheit 451 Readalikes for young people:

Avi - Nothing but the Truth
Clements, Andrew - The Landry News
Klise, Kate - Regarding the Fountain
Krensky, Stephen - Arthur and the Scare-Your-Pants-Off Club
Neufeld, John - A Small Civil War

Compiled by Kate Skinner, Reference Librarian, Kitsap Regional Library
January 2008