Dear Fahrenheit 451 – Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks: A Librarian’s Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books in Her Life
by Annie Spence
Book about Books
244 pages
Published 2017

Dear Fahrenheit 451 was recommended to me by Doing Dewey in the comments to my last book about books, My Life With Bob. I’m very glad they recommended it, because I enjoyed this book immensely!

In Dear Fahrenheit 451, each chapter is a letter to a different book. (Except the last few chapters, those are letters to the reader.) The letters range from disappointment (Wicked) to adoration (The Fledgling) to creeped out (Principles of Bloodstain Pattern Analysis) – but they’re all entertaining, and usually pretty funny. Some letters are explaining why she’s culling them from the library’s collection (too many copies, or bad condition, or haven’t been checked out in years.)

The author has a wonderful writing style that makes me want to grab coffees and gab about books with her. It’s also a great book to read when you don’t have long periods of time to read – the chapters are short and self-contained, so there’s no rush to find out what happens next. It will most likely add things to your TBR, though, as most books about books tend to do!

I really enjoyed this one – it’s way better than My Life With Bob. Probably because it’s actually about the books, where My Life With Bob was more of a memoir.

From the cover of Dear Fahrenheit 451:

If you love to read, and presumably you do since you’ve picked up this book (!), you know that some books affect you so profoundly, they forever change the way you think about the world. Some books, on the other hand, disappoint you so much you want to throw them against the wall. Either way, it’s clear that a book can be your new soul mate or the bad relationship you need to end.

In Dear Fahrenheit 451, librarian Annie Spence has crafted love letters and breakup notes to both the iconic and the eclectic books she has encountered over the years. From her breakup letter to The Giving Tree (a dysfunctional relationship book if ever there was one) to her love letter to The Time Traveler’s Wife (a novel less about time travel and more about the life of a marriage, with all of its ups and downs), Spence will make you think of old favorites in a new way. Filled with suggested reading lists, Spence’s take on classic and contemporary books is very much like the best of literature – sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes surprisingly poignant, and filled with universal truths.

A celebration of reading, Dear Fahrenheit 451 is for anyone who loves nothing more than curling up with a good book . . . and another, and another, and another!