Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Huxley's wild imagination certainly kicked in when he wrote Brave New World. This book is amazing! I loved how well the characters were developed, and the syntax used throught the novel. After reading this book, many of my friends said that they didn't get it. Well, I don't think there's really anything to 'get', but there is room for appreciation of Huxley's writing. There is something to be learned from this novel about society and the world we live in. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in a non-generic novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Vastly overrated, but still quite good.
Review: This book is a very thought-provoking, interesting book, and also quite an enjoyable read, telling some unpleasant truths with a liberal touch of subtle and rather offbeat humor. Still, I can't imagine why it enjoys the spectacular reputation that it has; it is good, but it isn't THAT good. It's a fairly typical anti-scientific distopia, warning of all the horrors that will surely accompany modern society's move toward comfort, ease, and lack of personal responsibility, and away from all those marvellous old-fashioned virtues of suffering, sacrifice, self-flagellation, and martyrdom. Granted, some of its points are very true, but a great many of them are overstated past the point of caricature, and others are very debatable. (Does anyone REALLY think that the culture that created John ("the savage") and all of his foolish self-abasement is REALLY any better than the majority society in the book? Does anyone REALLY think that by quoting Shakespeare without truly understanding what he's quoting, he's any better than the "normal" folks quoting hypnopaedic brainwashing without understanding what they're quoting? The author seemed to; I don't.) Still, as I said, this makes for a very interesting and thought-provoking book, even if the thoughts it provoked in me are very different from those the author intended to provoke. And it IS a very well-crafted book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Brave New World- hopefully not too soon
Review: Well, I got into this book through an Advanced Placement English class in high school. I read George Orwell's 1984, and I absolutely loved it. So for our final project, I thought I'd read BNW. To tell you the truth, it was disappointing. It was not nearly as long as 1984(I'm a good long book lover), and I didn't think it was quite as well....shall we say.....mapped out. Certainly, a lot of thought went into it, but it is just simply too short. However, it's a good book with some good points, and I would recommend it to anyone. But if you want to read something even better, check out 1984. It will really set your wheels turning, if you like to stay up late at night and just think.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good...
Review: Hey y'all. First, I want to say that I totally think this book was about a really kewl subject...and all the "metaphors" to real life are amazing...But anyways. I think some aspects of this book could be better, such as explaining things better. Even after reading the book I still wasn't completely sure what decanting is...all I know is that it's like, the last part of the "test tube baby" thing...but I'm not sure what exactly. Although some things could have been done better, there were some parts that were really good. Huxley uses graphic words to describe what things and people look like, and they are very good descriptions.
Rating:
Summary: Be Open Minded
Review: I started reading this book at 8:30 p.m. last night and found that I could not put it down or go to sleep until I finished. If you decide to read this book the one thing that you must do is prepare to be open minded, because if you are not you will not enjoy it at all and will probably find it preverse and sickening. As an English student we have discussed the novel in class and many of my classmates have also found it to be a very insightful novel, but there are a few people who read it with the typical closed mind set and did not learn a thing. When Huxley wrote this novel he was only postulating at what the world could become, and based on some aspects of society today we may be working towards this end. The novel will send chills down your spine if you are able to link the deified aspects of the new World Society to some of the things which our society deifies today. When reading consider this: what really is hapiness and how does society push us to achieve it today? Good luck and happy reading.
Rating:
Summary: Soma-ch Potential
Review: 1984 is very straight forward (though undeniably a masterpiece). It tells you what to think, and doesn't venture far from those ideas until the end. You hate Big Brother. It's that simple. In Brave New World, the line is blurred. While Orwell has created a government you love to hate, Huxley's totalitarian society is genuinely likeable. While their ideas are unorthodox by today's standards, these ideas manage to create a world without pain or suffering. This world is a place you would love to live in. Everyone is happy, industry runs like a finely tuned machine, and all of our world's discomforts have been eliminated. Yet, when we are introduced to Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson, and Johnny Savage, things change. It is difficult to know what to think or what Huxley is thinking until the book is over, and even then a very cryptic ending keeps us wondering. In this sense, the novel is superior to 1984. Also, Huxley has done a much better job of predicting the future (the book was written before 1984 and takes place roughly 580 years after that novel's time period). While some old science fiction clichés have yet to be replaced by the modern ones, that is to be expected. Despite these successes, the book has a variety of faults. First, there are places where it is obvious that Huxley was rushing through them simply to get on with things. The savage reservation, John's fish-out-of-water tale, and the concept of the "islands" all seem wasted and thin. The savage reservation is particularly troubling. There are plot holes here with John's mother, the descriptions are too brief, and the chapters don't have the same complexity of the rest of the novel. The ending has the same feeling. It seems tacked on, without substance, and doesn't really say anything meaningful. It is too short, doesn't really relate to the questions in the reader's mind, and makes us dislike the character it deals with (that's how I felt at least). Huxley just jumps around too much. The characters seem undeveloped because of this. There is an incredible amount of potential for greatness, but the book falls flat of attaining it. I loved this book, but only because I forgave it for many of its faults. Read this as a companion piece to 1984. They make up for each others' weaknesses.
Rating: 
Summary: Brave, but somewhat clunky, New World
Review: My gripes with this book are rather technical. I found the structure clunky, since we don't have a protaganist to follow throughout the story. At first we think Bernard is the main character, and he is for a short while. We also think his attempts at a relationship with Lenina will provide some thread to follow, and it does, but only briefly. Once John Savage enters the story, Bernard fades into the background, his relationship with Lenina is dropped completely, and we might as well be reading a separate book. Even Lenina herself might have been a common thread throughout, only she too is unceremoniously dumped off-screen. If John is the ultimate focus, why don't we meet him earlier in the book, perhaps have his story on the reservation alternated with episodes in London? That way he might've been more fleshed out as a character, and we'd be able to follow the "real hero" of the tale all the way through. Huxley's vision hits the spot of recognition in some places, but not others. Rather amusing to think that 600 years from now the factories are not only employing all these people for the simplest of mechanical jobs, but churning them out by the millions specifically for that purpose... hmmm, no automation of menial tasks, interesting. No computers or Palm Pilots either, everyone still uses pencil and paper!! And no Norplant, the women wear their birth control pills on a belt as a fashion accessory, and have to be drilled to remember to take them. OK, I'll cut Huxley some slack, since his theme isn't technology itself, but rather the uses to which it is put by the powers-that-be. If the book is meant as a satire of current conditions in England in the 1930's, I'm probably also missing his real point. My verdict: interesting as a period-piece, to see how things stack up against a 70 year old vision of the future, but doesn't tell us anything that an astute observer of the world today can't figure out for himself. If you need what's right in front of you pointed out...
Rating: 
Summary: new world gone bad!
Review: I think this book was not very captavating. It was very boring and put me to sleep every 5 minutes. It's a good bed time book!
Rating:
Summary: HORRIFYINGLY ACCURATE
Review: Although this book was written in 1932, it is amazing how much of it is happening now. In the book, people worship the Ford god. Of course, Ford was one of the biggest, if not THE biggest and most important company back then. Cars were beginning to replace the horse-and-buggy way of traveling. Huxley obviously took note of this fact while writing this book, and it's AMAZING how it seamlessly fits in. The Year of Our Lord is The Year of Our Ford in Brave New World. Scary, huh? Babies are mass-produced and predestined as to what field they will work in--batch A will be doctors, batch B will be engineers, etc. There is a drug called Soma that reminds me a lot of the melange in Frank Herbert's Dune. As in most if not all utopian novels, people fornicate with whoever they want and think nothing of it. The writing style is certainly different from the norm. Not exactly Hemingway, but not exactly like those older authors who would spend ten pages describing a mountain range. In between but leaning towards Hemingway. One of the major characters of the story is a man known as the Savage. The first half of the book goes into detail about the society, while the second half focusing primarily on the Savage who is dragged out of his reservation and forced to cope with this Brave New World. The last line of this book was most shocking, but understandable, and is certainly one of the most memorable ending-lines in literature. Before reading it, my expectations weren't so high for this book, because I was under the impressions that any book written before 1980 would be boring. I was wrong. This is one of the very few books that EVERYBODY should read. IGNORE THIS BOOK AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Rating:
Summary: I Loved this Book
Review: This amazing book about what may very well be our near future is one of my favorites. It is a sad look into a future of a "perfect" society, where most people look beautiful, and no one ever has to worry about feeling depressed, or feeling anything for that matter. Sex is a constant theme in this book. And although it was tiresome after a while, I think that part had to be included in this book, because that is what our society focuses on most of the time. The reader, however, begins to believe there is hope for this world yet, because there are two particular characters who seem to realize what a horrible mess the world is in. The main character, though, Bernard, I do not believe is one of these characters who truly cares. He only wants things to be different because he is different, not as attractive as everyone else, too short, not "normal." He doesn't truly care about how horrible mankind has become, never feeling anything. He only wants to be "normal." His friend, however, and The Savage, whom the reader meets later in the book, truly do care, and don't like the way mankind has become. Over all, this is a wonderfully sad yet hopeful book, and everyone should read it.
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