Book recommendation: Dear Fahrenheit 451, by Annie Spence

Do you know how I sometimes say that certain books are best suited for certain people? Well, here’s the type of person that should read Dear Fahrenheit 451, by Annie Spence: Anyone who loves books.

Seriously. If you’re a book-lover of any sort, you should check this one out. Because that’s what Dear Fahrenheit 451 is about—loving books. Well, okay, so it also makes fun of a few. And wonders why a few were written. But I swear, it’s mostly about loving them.

And I can guarantee I’m not the only one who’ll fall in love with this particular book after reading it.

As a librarian, Annie Spence spends plenty of time around books. Enough that she has quite the relationship with them, and has developed quite the repertoire with them. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she shares some of the letters she’s written to the books in her life, be they her favourites or the ones she’s happy to be removing from her library’s shelves.

I enjoyed Dear Fahrenheit 451 for a lot of different reasons. Many of the letters made my heart happy, while others made me full-on laugh. Others made me feel sad, somehow, because of how heartfelt Spence was in writing them. But all of them were worth reading, making the book as a whole hard to put down.

The book isn’t made up wholly of letters, however. The latter half-ish is more advice, of sorts, for book-lovers. It varies from book recommendations to excuses readers can use to get out of events they don’t want to attend. It’s almost like a librarian in a book.

Overall, Dear Fahrenheit 451 is definitely the type of book I’d recommend you pick up if you love books. It’s well worth reading.

—

Goodreads summary

A Gen-X librarian’s laugh-out-loud funny, deeply moving collection of love letters and break-up notes to the books in her life.

Librarians spend their lives weeding. Not weeds, but books! Books that have reached the end of their shelf life, both literally and figuratively. They remove the ones that patrons no longer check out, and they put back the ones they treasure. Annie Spence, who has a decade of experience as a Midwestern librarian, does this not only at her Michigan library but also at home, for her neighbors, at cocktail parties—everywhere. In Dear Fahrenheit 451, she addresses those books directly. We read her love letters to Just Kids and Frog and Toad Storybook Treasury, as well as her break-ups with The Giving Tree and Dear John. Her notes to The Goldfinch and The Time Traveler’s Wife feel like classics. Through the lens of the books in her life, Annie comments on everything from women’s psychology to gay culture to health to poverty to childhood aspirations. Hilarious, compassionate, and wise, Dear Fahrenheit 451 is the consummate book-lover’s book.