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Brave New World

Brave New World

List Price: $12.95
Your Price: $9.71
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very Stimulating
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. Even though some aspects of the society were hard to imagine or relate to, I found many of the ideas to be very interesting. I found the society to be very practical in how it was run and with the efficiency in which it ran. I thought that the characters in the society fit very well. Overall I loved this book. I think, however, to fully enjoy this book, you must have an open mind to what could be and not what is.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best well-written negative-utopia novel ever.
Review: What can I say about the second greatest novel of the 20th century. This is a book that shows just how inhumane and unfeeling humanity can be. In fact, the novel's 'Savage', who is considered inferior to the Utopians, is the most human character in the book. The shocking ending will leave you reeling. Truly amazing, my hat is off to the late Sir Aldous Huxley.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The prediction was wrong? WHO CARES!!!!!!
Review: Ok, sure, some stuff was wrong in his "prediction." That was not the point. Huxley wrote this book to compare where he thought society was going; and to warn against the evils of totalitarianism, happiness/art vs. science, diminished family values, and control of free will. This was not boring as some people may have thought -- I thought it was until we started discussing it in my 9th grade english class. This is science fiction at its best!!!!!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This book was absolutely scary, yet beautiful...
Review: I read "Brave New World" as an assignment for my 8th grade class, and I loved it. The way Aldous Huxley portrays Lenina, Marx, and Savage could be viewed almost as a warning of what our lives could become. Comparing this with Shakespeare was one of the most enjoyable assignments I have ever had to do. "Brave New World" is wonderfully unique and I would advise any age group to read it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: I hated this book! It was torture to read it!
Review: I thought this book was boring and pointless. I was forced to read it for school, and I hated every minute of it

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Better than some assigned readings
Review: First of all, I'd like to say that I'm frustrated by people's comparisons of soma to prozac, ritalin, etc. Anti-depressants do not make one "trip out" at all, especially not like Huxley's soma. They are not escapes from reality. I'd compare soma to some street drugs, but never to medicine that helps Attention Deficit folks function like normal people, or to the mood stabalizers a mannic depressive person might need. I understand that people are trying to say that Huxley's vision is today, and while there are significant similarities, the world within the book is not our world. A possible future? I seriously doubt it, but that isn't an invalidation of the present-day issues this book brings attention to.

That said, the story is very interesting. I've only read it once, and haven't had any intellectually stimulating discussions on issues it brings up, but the possibility of such discussions gives great value to the book. It flowed very well (except at the end of ch3) and was enjoyable.

Early in the book I was drawing parallels to Orwell's "1984" but the similarities for the most part disappeared around ch7. Huxley's characters are much more real than Orwell's in my opinion, and I followed the plot with much more interest than I did with "1984". I could connect with each character; I felt like I was inside thier minds, not because Huxley tells us so much what they're thinking, but he shows it (as in ch6 in the Lenina/Bernard incident). Each character is believable and alive, and that more than anything keeps me engaged.

I liked the way the characters were introduced and how I couldn't seem to label any one of them as The Main Character. I also couldn't define a "good guy" and "bad guy" because there was no right and wrong view. Everyone was justified in thier own way. Sure there aren't families and monogomy, but no one saw anything wrong with that. The people didn't desire fundamental societal change, and those who did weren't executed or anything, they were given opportunities to live within environments compatable to thier wants and needs.

So hey, it's a good read, especially after attemping Dicken's "Great Expectations". =)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What is right? What is wrong?
Review: Brave New World is a downright chilling book. It is far more terrifying than any other book I have read. The horror in this book come from the fact that Huxley presents his vision of the future in such a way that one cannot decide weither it is good or evil. Adding to the horror is his description of the Savage reservation and of the society of Alphas experiment. These two things are meant to represent our current society. He presents the unsavory choice between our world with its violence, disease, and sorrows and the future world of castes and conditioning. People have commented here and in other places that the residents of Huxley's Brave New World are not free. This is not entirely true. The future people of Brave New World are completely free in their world because they do not know that it could be different! This is what makes Brave New World so difficult for me to categorize. Are the Epsilons oppressed? No, because they cannot know anything different than the way they were made. Yes, because they did not have a choice in becoming an Epsilon. Is it wrong to sacrifice freedom for stability and peace? No, because then there is no war or hatred. Yes, because there is no independant thought. Is it wrong to desire the future that Huxley presents? No, because there is no war, disease, hatred, violence, instability, or sadness. Yes, because there is free sex, drugs, no freedom of thought, no parents, no old, no past, no history, no God, no change, no love? All these questions are raised when one reads Brave New World. None of them have clear answers. I see trends toward Huxley's future in our current society. Commentary on Huxley has generally concluded that it would not be a good thing for our world to become like Huxley's. Why? Would it truly be so terrible? The people of Brave New World know nothing else. What exactly is it that is so terrible about Huxley's future? Is it Brave New World an evil world? I cannot decide this. That is why Brave New World is so terrifing to me. This is absolutely a m! ust read book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Brave New World is spectacular...
Review: I'm currently in eleventh grade in high school. A Brave New World was a suggested book to read because of the content and reading level. I loved the book, and that's saying a lot considering most students hate the books they read in high school.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brave New World, 1984, A Clockwork Orange
Review: These 3 books are 3 of my all time favorite books. Read them, look at them, notice an iteresting continuity between them going from Clockwork to 1984 to Brave New World. Read and think, pretty mind blowing when you sit down and ponder them.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Interesting but misguided
Review: Second-rate in terms of literary merit, "World" nevertheless does present interesting ideas. Wrong, but interesting. Although Huxley portrayed a society which pursues happiness above all else as inherently dystopian, in retrospect I don't think I would decline a chance to live like the characters do, after all life is finite and hedonism is only bad if you cant afford it. To Huxley's credit, "World" was written before 1945, after which it became painfully clear to everyone that no one was going let anyone be too happy for too long. Worth checking out.


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