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blurstoftimes's Reviews (61)
Incessantly comical and strangely academic book about what makes a good film. When it comes to comedy writing, Ayoade is at the top of the class!
Absolutely one of the best written comic series that I’ve ever read; a masterwork of eye-catching illustrations, incredible moments of characterization , and harrowing, wartime tonality.
Closest to a 3.3/5.0
Aldous Huxley’s stupendously intriguing concept of what Christopher Hitchens in the foreword called “super-utilitarianism” is the main reason you will want to read this book. Huxley’s world, where individuals are industrially conditioned to be inferior to the collective work that sustains a society, is both imaginative and challenging in a way that always kept me glued to the pages. And, in this contemporary moment, a world dominated by human hatcheries and hierarchies of segregated and quasi-liberated workers who are never inconvenienced because they can’t escape this scientifically planned contentment is not at all the fantasy it used to appear to be in the 1930s when this was first published.
As for the story itself, it is disappointingly insular, predictably plotted, and crudely paced. While Huxley is a dynamite writer who can effortlessly blend the cerebral with the contextual and the comedic with the absurd, his story soon begins to reveal one of my biggest fears when reading classic literature: a cast of characters who are not in the least bit interesting or lovingly crafted. Of course, some may say that this is the point of the story and that the characters are not as important as the didactic world-building that they operate as vehicles for. Personally, if I am to care about the stakes in a story, I must also care about the characters.
Also, his prose, while certainly shiny and clever in handfuls, presents some reader/author pitfalls—notably, his tendency to talk down to the reader—and I was also not a fan of the lack of sympathy instilled in the abject timeline he crafted for the tragic, offensively written character of Linda.
I probably will not return to Brave New World, but I can say that it does deserve to be read by others. Just don’t expect a sci-fi dystopian story that rivals 1984 or Fahrenheit 451.
I mean, that downer ending…
Woof.
Aldous Huxley’s stupendously intriguing concept of what Christopher Hitchens in the foreword called “super-utilitarianism” is the main reason you will want to read this book. Huxley’s world, where individuals are industrially conditioned to be inferior to the collective work that sustains a society, is both imaginative and challenging in a way that always kept me glued to the pages. And, in this contemporary moment, a world dominated by human hatcheries and hierarchies of segregated and quasi-liberated workers who are never inconvenienced because they can’t escape this scientifically planned contentment is not at all the fantasy it used to appear to be in the 1930s when this was first published.
As for the story itself, it is disappointingly insular, predictably plotted, and crudely paced. While Huxley is a dynamite writer who can effortlessly blend the cerebral with the contextual and the comedic with the absurd, his story soon begins to reveal one of my biggest fears when reading classic literature: a cast of characters who are not in the least bit interesting or lovingly crafted. Of course, some may say that this is the point of the story and that the characters are not as important as the didactic world-building that they operate as vehicles for. Personally, if I am to care about the stakes in a story, I must also care about the characters.
Also, his prose, while certainly shiny and clever in handfuls, presents some reader/author pitfalls—notably, his tendency to talk down to the reader—and I was also not a fan of the lack of sympathy instilled in the abject timeline he crafted for the tragic, offensively written character of Linda.
I probably will not return to Brave New World, but I can say that it does deserve to be read by others. Just don’t expect a sci-fi dystopian story that rivals 1984 or Fahrenheit 451.
I mean, that downer ending…
Woof.
