Portable Magic
Reading, for me, is entertainment and an escape from the real world. But it can also inform and stretch the boundaries of the life I live.
Currently reading
Brave New World ★★★☆☆
Audio version from Audible. Although the story kept me engaged enough to finish it, I can't say I truly enjoyed it. It offers some interesting (and I suppose novel, for the time) ideas. I think it's a pretty accurate appraisal of human nature. But that's really all this novel is - an attempt to answer the question of what humans would become if they were made completely comfortable, encouraged to completely indulge in sensual pleasures, discouraged from forming personal attachments, and biologically and pyschologically engineered to be satisfied with their assigned lot in life. It offers some interesting ideas about how human society could be arranged to make it happen, assuming that technology had advanced enough to provide the solutions. And I found it quaint to read a story of a dystopian future that was apparently written at a time before people gave much thought to the environmental impact of a world-wide emphasis on rampant consumerism and the industry and waste that would result. But the reason I didn't really care for Brave New World is that the characters were incredibly flat. None of them seemed very real. I could forgive the antiquated view of the differing male/female relationships in a social environment where sexual promiscuity was encouraged, and even the protagonist's awful misogyny, as I suppose that would mirror a 1930's conventional morality. Even with those allowances, though, I just couldn't buy into the main characters and their motivations. I realize that "the savage" character was needed for the social commentary, but his whole storyline blew the novel for me.