When I first read Fahrenheit 451 in middle school, I thought the premise was laughable, and couldn't take it a bit seriously. Now that I've had double the life experience I did back then (more than double, really, the first few years don't really count for much), I can appreciate the frustration of feeling like a literate outcast in an idiotic culture. (especially in the context of the 2016 US election cycle!) I also have better context for sci-fi tropes like the Hound that are echoed decades later in the Rat Things of Snow Crash, and the cultural repression of the mid 20th century.