Brave New World
Just to “bookend” Banned Books Week, I decided to read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This book is a dark vision of a dystopian future where everyone is conditioned for their specific slot in life. It starts out simply giving detailed descriptions of this world and the people that live in it, and I loved it.
Then, it kind of veered off track. Some of the “civilized” people find a “savage” living out on a reservation, and bring him back to civilization and parade him around at parties. There’s a Matrix-style “confrontation” (meaning one guy asks a lot of questions and the other guy explains it, for pages and pages), and then it ends, rather abruptly.
Overall, it was very creative, but anti-climactic. It also has some sex stuff in it, so I understand why people try to keep this book out of schools. I liked the world Huxley created, but I feel like he under-utilized it; it became a vehicle for an overly simple story. On the Clever Chick Scale this gets a “somewhat disappointing, but I’m glad I read it”.
