After having read this rare book, Fahrenheit 451, I must say – good Lord! If those firemen every tried burning my books, it would be over my dead body! I am not going through that again. On a more serious note, however, the idea of such a society is truly terrifying. No books? The notion is mind boggling. Why, books are such a part of my existence I would be nothing without them, nothing at all! It makes me queasy just to think of it. It’s absurd, that books should be outlawed. But then again, it isn’t. Just a minor glance at this world I live in promises such a future. There are far too many similarities between this world and the one of that book. Unsettling, to say the least!

Once I finished the book, my mind was certainly uneasy. I thought I might wind down by watching a few episodes of The Twilight Zone (a foolish idea, in retrospect). I tuned in first to “Time Enough At Last” and then “The Obsolete Man” and again, good Lord! Nothing at all there to put my mind at ease!

That night, my mind kept turning with these horrible thoughts. Time, time, time – it never slows down, never stops ticking away. That poor man in “Time Enough At Last” couldn’t catch a moment to read and once he did – his glasses break! Do I myself have enough time to restore my library? Lord knows I’m getting up there in age – I can’t remember the last time every hair on my head wasn’t gray! I very well might keel over picking through a bin of old books without even having half of my library restored. And the idea of obsolescence in “The Obsolete Man” is horrifying. Will I, a dusty book collector, one day become obsolete, as well? Will they do me in like poor Romney Wordsworth?

Of course, all of these silly thoughts were not so terrible in the daylight. I certainly have enough time to get my library in order. And of course I won’t be made obsolete. How ridiculous!

But still, unsettling.