Green, 34, recalls that he liked it "more than most of the books I read for English class that year (including Romeo and Juliet), but that's not saying much. I was one of those students who was predisposed to dislike a book simply because it has been assigned."
These days, he's "a much bigger fan of English classes and critical reading," and he's eager to argue that "it's pleasurable to read great literature and to read with care and thoughtfulness."
Tuesday around noon ET, John and his brother Hank Green, the wisecracking VlogBrothers who post video blogs, will announce on their YouTube channel that < i>Fahrenheit 451 is this summer's reading for their Nerdfighter Book Club aimed at teens.
(Nerdfighters do not fight nerds. "They fight for nerds," Green says, "for intellectualism, for the life of the mind." It must be working: Their channel, youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers, has 231 million views of its weekly vlogs on a variety of topics.)
Green, whose novel about teens with cancer, The Fault in Our Stars, hit No. 4 on USA TODAY's Best-selling Books list in January, is looking forward to discussing Bradbury's themes â€" "the ways context and sustained engagement add meaning to human life in a place (the Internet) that is not exactly known for sustained intellectual engagement."
John and Hank Green's new Nerdfighter Bo ok Club pick is the late Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451.'
Social networks "are often home to precisely the kinds of factoids and half-truths that Bradbury worries about," he says. But while the Internet "contains a lot of videos of squirrels riding skateboards, it can also be a place that facilitates big conversations about books."
John, who lives in Indianapolis, and Hank, 32, a singer/songwriter who runs an environmental website (ecogeek.com) in Missoula, Mont., each will post two vlogs and written comments in response to comments from readers.
It's their third summer book club: Their videos about The Great Gatsby in 2011 and Catcher in the Rye in 2010 drew more than 800,000 views combined.
Green says they chose Fahrenheit 451 after Bradbury's death last month at 91 when they read that he had sold fewer books in his lifetime than the erotic Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy sold in the last month, "which we found sadly funny."
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