Brave New World

I’m halfway done with my classic list! Yay! Luckily this latest one was a bit shorter and actually made me want to keep reading more so than the others. I just finished Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Again, with all the other books, I had no idea what this was about. This takes place way in the future with a society that’s has been developed from reproductive technology and has been sleep-conditioned. No crime, no sickness, no getting old, no families, no science, no art, no free-thinking. Everyone just does what they are conditioned to do, respective to their caste.

I think this would be a good discussion for a book club. I was interested in the genetic engineering aspect of the novel, along with nature vs nurture argument. Especially when John, “the savage”, was introduced. You see how he tries to unsuccessfully influence society. Some of his actions did seem a bit more extreme than necessary once he leaves London, but then again this is all he knows from his enclosed environment. He becomes more of a spectacle with disastrous results.

Overall, I would recommend this book to read, at least for the discussions it would stimulate.

To give a quick recap, so far I’ve crossed off:

1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Next up is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.