Summertime Nerdfighter Book Club 2012 edition: Fahrenheit 451
project history · status: completed · last event: outcome (2012-09-18 (said on 2012-09-16, implied))
Parts: Hank asks viewers to get a copy of Fahrenheit 451 and read along with the summer book club (2012) · John asks what viewers thought of Fahrenheit 451 Part One and what makes their lives feel meaningful (2012)
About: Nerdfighter Book Club, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
| date | event | what | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-06-15 | launched | Hank announces the summertime Nerdfighter book club is back, reading Fahrenheit 451 in honor of Ray Bradbury. | Flinching in the Shower 00:03:17 |
| 2012-07-03 | rule change | John sets the book club format: both brothers will read Fahrenheit 451 and make videos about it, with a first assignment due next Tuesday (10 July 2012). | The Physics of Book Clubs and Vidcon 00:01:36 |
| 2012-07-10 | milestone | John posts the book club's first discussion video, on Part One of Fahrenheit 451, 'The Hearth and the Salamander'. | Feeling More Alive: Fahrenheit 451's The Hearth and the Salamander 00:00:00 |
| 2012-09-18 (said on 2012-09-16, implied) | outcome | John posts the book club's discussion video on the second half of Fahrenheit 451. | Existential Airport Anxiety 00:00:00 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).
What is said about it
13 statements, by date (the events above are the turns of the thread; these are the details).
- 2012-06-15 · Flinching in the Shower — announcement: Hank announces the brothers are reinstituting the Summertime Nerdfighter Book Club, reading Fahrenheit 451 together. — 00:03:17
- 2012-06-15 · Flinching in the Shower — Hank says they chose the book in honor of Ray Bradbury's amazing life, and because Fifty Shades of Grey outselling Bradbury is 'messed up'. — 00:03:22
- 2012-06-15 · Flinching in the Shower — Hank says that, apparently, Fifty Shades of Grey, basically Twilight fan fiction turned into a novel, has now sold more books than Ray Bradbury did in his entire life. (hedged) — 00:03:27
- 2012-07-03 · The Physics of Book Clubs and Vidcon — announcement: John notes that USA Today has profiled the Nerdfighter Book Club. — video description
- 2012-07-03 · The Physics of Book Clubs and Vidcon — announcement: John says the Nerdfighter Book Club is reading Fahrenheit 451; the first assignment is to finish Part One, 'The Hearth and the Salamander', by next Tuesday (10 July 2012). — 00:01:36
- 2012-07-03 · The Physics of Book Clubs and Vidcon — John says what he loves about reading together is what he loves about VidCon: Hank started VidCon but everyone makes it happen, as Bradbury wrote his novel but it becomes real only when read. — 00:02:05
- 2012-07-10 · Feeling More Alive: Fahrenheit 451's The Hearth and the Salamander — John says that in Fahrenheit 451 everything is both alive and dead: the mechanical hound, Montag's mausoleum-like house, his wife Mildred, and the snake-like machine that saves her after a suicide attempt. — 00:00:47
- 2012-07-10 · Feeling More Alive: Fahrenheit 451's The Hearth and the Salamander — John reads the fighter jets that seem to 'pulverise the stars' as a clear message: technology has pulverized our nature. (hedged) — 00:01:17
- 2012-07-10 · Feeling More Alive: Fahrenheit 451's The Hearth and the Salamander — John says Ray Bradbury wrote the book in a library on a typewriter rented for 20 cents an hour. — 00:02:25
- 2012-09-04 · The Five Worst Places to Vomit — John meant to make a video about Fahrenheit 451, then, after Hank's Friday video, about the controversial rationale for taxing capital gains below income; both must wait. — 00:00:01
- 2012-09-18 (said on 2012-09-16, implied) · Existential Airport Anxiety — John grants that the second half of Fahrenheit 451 is often criticized for Professor Faber's deus ex machina arrival and overwrought symbols, like Granger's mirror factory. — 00:00:00
- 2012-09-18 (said on 2012-09-16, implied) · Existential Airport Anxiety — John still loves the novel because, as Faber says of another book, it can go under the microscope; such stories fill us up and make us feel more alive. — 00:00:32
- 2012-09-18 (said on 2012-09-16, implied) · Existential Airport Anxiety — John: For John, Fahrenheit 451 is ultimately not about censorship or television but about what happens when people choose distraction over engagement, and it was a wake-up call for him. — 00:03:27