Rating: 
Summary: good book
Review: huxley should be read by any serious literature student
Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing. Scary. Prophetic. Insightful.
Review: A modern nihilistic classic. Fodder for Western consumerism mentality. This book is a horrific vision of a world devoid of free will, love, beauty, truth, and hope. Each of these vital elements of life is replaced by a counterfeit feeling: free will for social comfort; love for sexual satisfaction; beauty for socially-conditioned physical attraction; truth for convenience; hope for the mind-altering soma. It is so far from reality though, for who would want to convince us that recreational sex and mind-numbing drugs are the answers to all of our problems? Er, never mind. Originally written in 1932, this book is a warning about the dangers of progress without ethical boundaries; but I kept thinking throughout the course of this book, "How far off from this BNW are we today?" This is exactly Huxley's point--look how scientific progress keeps leading the world into his vision: genetic engineering, a growing dependency on mood-altering drugs, a softening of our sensitivities towards truth and beauty, the panacea of consumerism. The BNW sacrifices beauty, truth, and love at the altar of convenience and frolic. A beautiful thread of irony weaves throughout this utopian mosaic--and Huxley plays on our sensitivities as we realize that BNW is not paradise, but Hell. C.S. Lewis stated that Hell is a place where one gets everything one desires. Because the socially- and genetically-conditioned decanted humans have no capacity to desire more out of life, they live out their days in quiet oblivion, believing that life amounts to nothing more than obtaining a string of happy moments bridged by the mind-numbing psychological pacifier, soma. Eeeeccch. I think readers should experience the creepiness found within these pages, and then question why such feelings surround this work. What is missing from this life? Who wins the debate between Savage and Mond? For this reason, I afford this classic four stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Hmm...
Review: I don't get it. It's very unusual. Controversial in its time, but still widely read throughout schools in the United States. I must say it wasn't all bad, the ideas he portrayed were revolutionary and original, although I was extremely let down at the end. It is clever that drugs aren't for pleasure anymore, they are everyday, for the use of increasing entertainment. That's how someone explained their interpretation, but I still [dislike] my English teacher for making me read it. It just seemed as if I was being led to believe one thing throughout, expecting some kind of epiphany, but got a guy walking in circles at the top of the stairs...
Rating:
Summary: An Important Read....
Review: I used to carry the title of this book in a hip-holster ready to draw on any quasi-intellectual inquiry into my literary pallette as the "most important book I'd ever read". It occured to me recently that although I seemed to feel somewhere in my bones that this statement was true, I hadn't read the book for over six years and couldn't even remember the name of the main character. That being said, having recently devoured Aldous Huxley's landmark novel "Brave New World", I must most empahtically again declare that this is one of THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS I'VE EVER READ! What makes a book important? I think it has something to do with how well its themes and sentiments resonate with the world you experience from day to day. A quantity measured only by how many more truths you can see in unexpected places like the news, the grocery store, or a conversation around the water bubbler. "A Brave New World", though written at the beginning of the century, seems to have been written with a vision and a penetrating lesson for today. The world described in Huxley's account is streamlined by science and technology, driven by open-ended corporate goals, and carried on the backs of a populace socially-trained from birth to continue an existence without question or meaning. It's a world shackled by a facism with no face or name. Contrary to Orwell's visions of a future entrapped by the ever-present 'Big Brother', Huxley's version of slavery is one enforced by ignorance and pleasure. A theme that seems well-suited to the comfortably worked, television-encased, numbed to violence and tradgedy, pill-popping, bacteria petri-dish America that exists today. It's impossible to read this book without seeing even some of his most outrageous symbolism come alive in the reality of today. To say it is a book that resonates is an understatement. To say that it is an important read is necessary.
Rating:
Summary: The Brave New World book review
Review: The Brave New World is a story about the future. The story takes place in Europe. In The Brave New World there are no families. There are no mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. People were not allowed to have children. Every body is produced through science. The country is run by a man called the Director of Hatchery and Conditioning (DHC). The DHC conditions everybody to what he wants people to know. In this story there is no pain or anger. When somebody begins to have a bad feeling they take a pill called Soma, and it makes them happy. The main characters are Bernard, Lenina and John. Bernard goes on a trip to a place called the Reservation. The DHC allows Bernard to take one guest, but also warns him about breaking the rules of the city. The DHC lets Bernard and his friend Helmholtz Watson know that if they keep on breaking the rules they will be exiled from the country. Bernard chooses Lenina to go with him. Together they meet a boy named John who turns out to be the DHC's son. Bernard decides to bring John back to the city were they live. Bernard thinks this will save him from being exiled for not following the rules. When Bernard brings John back, the DHC gets embarrassed and quits as the ruler. A man by the name of Mustapha Mond is next in line to be the ruler.
John was my favorite character because he expressed how he felt. John did not want the DHC and the government to control his life. He wanted to live under his own rules. John was not scared to say what he felt unlike the other characters. A comment that typified John was, "But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
I could relate to being in a place that I know nothing about. Last summer I went to Denver for three months. To me it was a new experience. I did not like it. The people and weather in Denver were different then I'm used to and made me feel uncomfortable. I stayed there for three months to see if my attitude would change about my new surroundings. I missed my friends and family a lot. This played a big role in my wanting to come back. That's how I think I relate to John by not feeling comfortable in my new surroundings.
I have to say that when I first started reading this book, I did not like it because I did not understand it. Huxley did a good job in explaining a lot of my questions in the ending chapters. My favorite part in the book was when John and Helmholtz Watson were alone with Mustapha Mond. They were not afraid to ask why world is how it is. Just because people are happy does mean that taking soma is the right thing to do.
I would recommend this book to everyone. I would surely recommend it to all my friends because I think that they would like the book. People who like science fiction would probably like this book because it takes place in the future. The author looked at science and technology and wrote about how society could change and how technology could take over society.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Review: I loved this book. It was hilarious. When people die in this utopia their corpses are taken to the crematorium for phosphorous recovery operations. I wouldn't mine living in this utopia. You get to have lots of recreational sex (orgy porgies) and take lots of the soma drug with no side effects. Children get to play erotic games with each other. One of these games they play is called Hunt the Zipper. Also there is security and stability in this Brave New World, nothing like the New World Order that are leaders are trying to establish. If there is crime, criminals get squirted with the soma drug instead of being shot with bullets. I would only like to live in this Brave New World only if I can be an Alpha and not an Epsilon-Semi moron. I believe that all americans would love this book. The utopia in this book promotes Consumerism and wasteful spending, the two driving forces of the US economy. Citizens are thought these ideas by such cliches as "The more stitches the less riches." The one question that this book did not answer for me was what is a sexophone?
Rating: 
Summary: Very interesting...
Review: This book was ok. It wasn't boring, but it wasn't the best either. I had to read this for school. I highly recommend that kids over 15 should read this. People who love sci-fi would also enjoy this book. It's content is very interesting. The book had an excellent plot and a good theme, but I didn't really see much character development. Overall, though, this book was pretty ok.
Rating:
Summary: A very twisted tale.
Review: This is a book that does a great job at showing the narrow mindedness of society. We fall into our norms and grooves and are shocked by anything that fales to fit into these refences. This book is about a dystopian society that has test tube babies, drug abuse and rocket cars. It shows the contrast of two cultures through a lost son who is found and his troubles adjusting to his new life. Truely bizzarre. A good read
Rating:
Summary: Dystopia or Utopia
Review: Brave New World is a must read, and becomes more relevant with each passing year. Much of Huxley's vision of the future is within our grasp: it is but a step from choosing the sex of one's babies to conditioning the physical and mental attributes of embryos; a step from the continual advertising bombardment of today to the consumerism of 'end don't mend', a step from TV to the feelies, a step from Prozac and Ritalin to Soma.
However Brave New World is not the terrifying vision of the future many make it out be. This is because Huxley contrasts his sterile, engineered society of the future with the grimy, superstitious society of the reservation. Huxley asks: is it better to have poverty, violence, art and freedom; or order, conformity, comfort and banality. After all happiness is still happiness even when produced by artificial means. The balance between order and chaos is a fundemental choice for any society.
All in all a thought provoking book, and therefore highly recommended
Rating:
Summary: read it to believe it ...
Review: you've got to read it to believe it. Yes it is a brave, totally new world. Huxley words his text like non-before. I have never read a book and can actually visualize it like watching a movie. one chapter has written like a commercial, you can visualize it as the scenes flash back and forth between a conversation and the motto's of the World State. Ooh, that is brave new way of writting a book. I feel for John the Savage in the book and can see how people treat an outcast (some one they don't consider the same) then and now and probably still the same in the future. It's terrible to see a difference can be named "the Savage". Huxley has used many famous politic figures' name : Marx (refered to Carl Marx) Linina (Lenin -- the rusian politician) etc. to enrich his plot --to give you an idea of a conformed world that is structurized like Communist Society. A world that if you were raised and born into a class, you are it -- alpha, beta, beta-minus etc. The world seem like an Utopia like Marx's once fatacizes but once the dream has become a reality, the structure/the politic itself is destructed. Once something is new and better, they are scared by it. Scared to see the structure they have is an unstablized one. Huxley, in the book, hard-pressed the fact of his world state's motto "COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY" to give you the idea of how well and organize Marx wanted his world to be. Anyway, i don't want to tell you much on how i view the book, because it is a book for you to see and reflect upon. Read it to believe it.
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