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Jul 04, 2011

Bird Brian rated it:

The background
It's hard to know where Aldous Huxley was coming from when he wrote Brave New World (BNW) in 1931. He was the brother of Julian Huxley, whose eugenicist ideas made him a darling of the Rockefellers and Fords. These old robber baron families' tax-free foundations have busied themselves for over one-hundred years researching both methods of social control, and schemes to centralize world political power into the hands of a few supranational organizations. Through Rockefeller in More...

72 comments like (98 people liked it)

Feb 29, 2008

Erin added it

remember that last semester of english class, senior year, where every class seemed painfully long and excrutiatingly pointless? when everybody sat around secretly thinking of cute and witty things to put in other people's yearbooks? when the teachers realized we were already braindead from filling out three dozen student loan applications and college housing forms? that's when honors english started getting a little lazy.

not that i minded. everybody got a book list. then every More...

26 comments like (120 people liked it)

Aug 10, 2011

Kemper rated it:

I have to apologize for this review. The concept of this book was so outlandish that I think it made my mind wander, and you may find some odd random thoughts scattered in it.

Anyhow, this book was so silly and unrealistic. Like any of this could happen. In the far future the babies are genetically engineered and designed for certain stations in life with a large workforce bred to be happy with menial jobs that don’t stress them physically or mentally. I really should look into More...

27 comments like (75 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Clare rated it:

As a teenager I went through a period of reading a vast number of distopian novels - probably all the teenage angst. This is the one that has continued to haunt me however, long after the my youthful cynicism has died it's death. It's basically a book about the utopian ideal - everyone's happy, everyone has what they want and EVERYTHING is based on logical principles. However, there is something very rotten at the heart. It's about how what we want isn't always what we should get. It looks More...

3 comments like (40 people liked it)

Apr 16, 2011

Stephen rated it:

3.0 stars. I need to breakdown my rating of this book into several segments because I thought parts of it were SPECTACULAR and parts of it were BORING AND BORDERING ON AWFUL. In the end, the important ideas of the novel and the really good segments carried the book to a 3.0 star rating.

THE REALLY GOOD/EXCELLENT - I thoroughly enjoyed the first third of the book in which the basic outline of the "Brave New world" is set forth. I found the very beginning of the s More...

10 comments like (56 people liked it)

Nov 15, 2010

Skylar rated it:

In Brave New World, first published in 1932, Huxley paints the picture of a world that is willing to surrender true joy for a bland happiness free of suffering, that is willing to abandon truth for comfort, that is willing to eschew heights in order to avoid depths, and that is quick to surrender human ambition and individual personality for the sake of societal harmony. It is a frightening presentation, precisely because it does not seem too improbable. Even in the United States, which is one More...

1 comment like (16 people liked it)

Aug 07, 2009

Mike rated it:

the first five chapters of this book (seventy years after its publication) are like looking at today, Sunday the 11th of May 2008. Much more an accurate rendition of soft-Fascist consumerism (Sony, Nike, Mortagage hysteria) and mind control (9/11, the war on terror) than anything Philip K Dick tried to cook up on his bent drug spoon.

and the book continues to be 'amazing' right through Mustapha Mond's sympathetic climactic expose and slightly beyond infamy into the wicked ending.
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7 comments like (19 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2012

Russell rated it:

Generally I'm skeptical of modern novels written by drug-using spiritualists that critique American capitalism, but this book turned out to be surprisingly good. It was both enjoyable and thought-provoking, as any piece of literature should be.

In this brave new world, the government controls its citizens by providing them with seemingly endless pleasure. The citizens are not encouraged to think for themselves, but rather are engineered believing that they are just another (replace More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2008

Steven rated it:

Awesome book of the dystopia/utopia genre that l simply loved. I can fully understand why it is considered a masterpiece and I am surprised it is not referenced more in popular culture (seems like Orwell’s 1984 gets much more publicity today, whereas this one might be more on point in describing today’s new world order.) In looking up the listed themes on the cliff notes version of the novel, the following are referenced: the use of technology to control society; the consumer society; the inc More...

0 comments like (12 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Patrick added it

I'm starting to hate "the mainstream's" fascination with dystopian novels. It's basically an education system marketing ploy dreamed up by the Media Lords in control of Orwell and Huxley's copyrights. Also academics and lay readers are ashamed to discuss science fiction these days so they have to fancy it up with genres like the dystopian novel. Brave New World is a pretty good dystopian yarn, fairly outdated (though not as outdated as 1984), fairly well written, fairly well executed. More...

12 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

ChRis.t.OS rated it:

i hate reviewing books like this one cause i got nothing new to say....at times i found it stupid and effortless plus non sense at the same time i thought it was gennious and inteligent,one other time i thought i was reading a book about religion but anyway that was written by a Huxley and i am just a 24 y.o. guy who hasn't done sex for a while....Controversial,yet importand....and a bit random!

71 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 13, 2010

Dee rated it:

Is this book really all that?

I was underwhelmed. But, strangely enough, that's why I'm giving it 3 stars. The ideas were all so familiar to me, like I've seen and read it all before, when actually this is one of a few early books that inspired all those other stories. Now Brave New World seems as unoriginal to me as Shakespeare feels cliche. So it really is a founding giant and a classic dystopia. That fact alone raises my rating from 2 to 3 stars.

There are a couple More...

5 comments like (15 people liked it)

May 24, 2008

Johannes rated it:

This book presents a futuristic dystopia of an unusual kind. Unlike in Orwell's 1984, Huxley's dystopia is one in which everyone is happy. However, they are happy in only the most trivial sense: they lead lives of simple pleasures, but lives without science, art, philosophy or religion. In short, lives without deeper meaning. Although people are expected to work hard and efficiently during working hours, during off hours people live in an infantile way, never engaging their minds, and satisf More...

7 comments like (27 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Christopher rated it:

Incredible to think this science-fiction book by Aldous Huxley was first published in 1932. Portrays a future where happiness is the universal goal of human society. Total happiness is ultimately achieved by the removal of art, science, and religion, and maintained by technology, conditioning, total fulfillment of physical desires, and drugs. The novel gets poignant when a 'savage' raised at a primitive Reservation in the desert Southwest enters the civilized world. The contrasts of the two More...

1 comment like (10 people liked it)

Sep 17, 2008

Valerie rated it:

This book is frightening. I'll take it to my classroom and subject the innocents to it.

5 comments like (20 people liked it)

Aug 07, 2011

Ensiform rated it:

In the 26th century, after a destructive war, the world lives in peace, managed by World Controllers who use the principles of assembly-line manufacture and psychology to enforce a ubiquitous, passivist, pansexual, consumerist culture. Raised from cells in a lab (the idea of mothers and fathers characterized as obscene) into castes (Alpha to Epsilon) through hypnopedia and Skinner-like conditioning through pain, people’s mental and physical growth is chosen and accordingly expanded or stunted. More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Feb 18, 2008

Hollowman777 rated it:

This book is on many a top 100 reading list. Aldous Huxley has the reputation of being an intellectual giant. His heritage places him in the land of England, the place where all of the great literary giants come. A Brave New World unfortunately does not live up to the credits,pedigree or even the cult following that chases after it.

Summary: In a nutshell this book is a mess. I am assuming that the majority of individuals that rate this book high on a novel list or 5 star it on here More...

4 comments like (15 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Cori rated it:

From my blog (yeah, I know it's lengthy):

I'm finding myself drawn to dystopian novels lately. Not really sure why. I think it's partly because Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale had such an effect on me when I was in college, and I'm constantly looking for something that disquiets my soul in the same way. And I very much enjoyed Fahrenheit 451. Plus books like this keep popping out at me at the library. Anyway, my next foray into dystopia was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
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1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Feb 22, 2009

Manny rated it:

There's some provocative discussion of this book in Houellebecq's Les Particules Elémentaires, which I just finished. One of the characters argues that Huxley originally intended his world as a utopia rather than a dystopia, and then changed his mind and tried to convince everyone it was meant ironically.

The proof? Apart from the caste system, which has been rendered unnecessary by computers, this is the world we're busily trying to create for ourselves, and which almost everyone wo More...

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Aug 29, 2011

Zeek rated it:

When my friends and I recently came to the realization that Americans have come to believe that the pursuit of happiness has become an inalienable right and that such pursuit means “I shouldn’t have to feel pain”, well, we thought we were being profoundly original. Apparently Huxley in this dystopian piece on what the society he lived in might look like at it’s full out extents realized this way before we did. (Darn you Aldous!) Written in the 30’s it’s almost eery how close the world he cre More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jun 26, 2010

Lavinia rated it:

I won't mention anything about the book's plot since it's a kind of cult book, already; every top 100 includes it. I gave it a comfortable 3*** appreciation so I wouldn't be blamed for not liking it, or, Ford forbid! liking it too much. Kiddin' :)
Actually, for someone who isn't keen on dystopias and sci-fi and doesn't read them on a regular basis, Brave New World really stands out. It might lack style, substance, tension or a strong central character (those who compare it to Orwell's 1984 More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 03, 2009

Richard rated it:

Do you need to re-read this, as I do? It has been too many years and I'm sure I'll respond differently than previously. Especially after listening to the excellent In Our Time podcast discussing the book. (Available on the BBC website here, but unfortunately only in a streaming format, not downloadable). As the host of that program says in his email:

There are books that you read a while ago and yet are still convinced you know well. At least that's my experience. I must have read Brave New Wor

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5 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 18, 2008

Nathan rated it:

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2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 29, 2008

Johanna rated it:

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1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Bahar rated it:

کتاب دنیای قشنگ نو یا دنیای شجاع نو را خیلی ها از کتابهای بسیار زیبا می دانند که در زمان خودش هم واقعا بی نظیر بود. حدود بیست و شش هفت سال پیش به فارسی ترجمه شده. هاکسلی در دنیای قشنگ نو، دنیای جدید تصویر میکند که در آن زمان بسیاری از مسائل ذکر شده در کتاب خیلی فانتزی و دور از دسترس به حساب می آمد مثل پرورش جنین در خارج ا ز محیط بدن انسان و ایجاد کارخانه های تولید انسان با درجات متفاوت هوشی . این سالها آنقدر کتاب و فیلم در این مورد ساخته شده که خیلی از چیزهایی که در این کتاب آمده دیگر ما را شگف More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

May 17, 2007

Lis rated it:

What can I say about this book that hasn't already been said? I read this book because Reza and I decided that we needed to read the books we already should have. I think I faked a book report on it once in junior high or high school. I was too busy reading (and trying to understand) the Iliad and such to worry about Brave New World back then. Now I wish I had. There are so many themes that you could easily pump out 10 different books reports on this book that is less than 200 pages long. It's h More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jul 10, 2007

Shelly Rae rated it:

This is five star for me, except for the ending. (spoiler upcoming).
The language is incredible, the ingenuity, creativity and philosophy are tremendous. I read in just a few days, didn't want to put it down.

But in the end: The flocking and making of the feely of Savage didn't seem consistent. In the utopia, the idyllic vision, I couldn't quite buy that the reporters/society would crave, or more importantly, have been conditioned to want to make fun of someone (although I can s More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jul 08, 2007

Seabury rated it:

This book is very intresting. It is not a straight out dystopia such as 1984 or farenheit 451, but rather it is a utopia of sorts. The world it portrays has (almost) everyone constantly happy and well off. Everything that needs to get done does get done, and it is absolutly perfect. However, despite that, there is something rotten about it. The typical reader won't say to himself "oh, what a wonderful world", but rather, "oh, what a horrid world". What I love about this novel More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Elizabeth rated it:

This is a book that I think people like or they dislike. I hated the society portrayed and therefore ended up hating most of the characters who are a product of that society. The way humans are engineered, the class structure, the twisted sexuality of the characters and the degredation of individual worth portrayed in the story just did not do it for me. I realize that it is sci-fi and a social commentary blahblahblah, but I still didn't like it. The savage was interesting to a degree, and I'll More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 15, 2009

Steven rated it:

I must have read this a dozen times before I fully grasped the central point. It was the foreword to another book, Neil Postman's AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH, that finally spelled it out for me.

Huxley's radical notion is difficult to grasp, but as simple as Postman's title: it's not war or foreign oppressors or Big Brother that will get us. It's our prosperity, technology, and insatiable appetite for distractions. In other words, if nothing else corrupts the West, we will very ha More...

1 comment like (12 people liked it)

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