Hey all, it’s that time of the month again. No, not THAT time…
The time when I order all my amazon.com things. Well, having already read Brave New World, and added Brave New World Revisited to my cart, I became a bit confused. Obviously Huxley has written a lot of other books…for those of you more in the know, considering I enjoyed BNW, what other books do you think I would also like?
Thanks, guys 
Ape and Essence was the first Huxley I read. It is hilarious and quite accessible compared with some of his other works.
I loved Doors of Perception (not a novel, I know), and it’s made me want to read **ISLAND **.
Has anyone here read it? Any opinions on it?
Hilarious and accessible! I still have nightmares about “Ape and Essence”! After I read it, I had to put in on my shelf of “Best books I’d ever read”, but I still couldn’t really look at it directly.
The deformed babies? The baboons, and Einstein on a leash? The glanders machine, pumping? The “No” banners taped to everyone’s genitals, and the general warping of sex towards bestiality, evil and corruption (well it didn’t help I read it right around puberty)?! Oh, horrible.
Great book, I recommend it.
I recommend “Island” too. I can’t recommend it enough. Like a lot of Utopian novels, it suffers from not being that good of a novel- in terms of plot, characters, etc. But it’s fascinating as a Utopian novel- the guy who gave you the bleak vision of Brave New World and Ape and Essence (ie, somebody who’s considered the depths of human evil) trying to postulate a GOOD human society.
It’s a hard won struggle, and therefore worth reading.
On, I think, a realativly lighter note, I’d also reccomend “After Many Summers Dies the Swan”.
I read ISLAND when I was a teenager and liked it…it’s one of Huxley’s last books, and is firmly in his “Hey, this here psilocybin sure is GOOD STUFF!” phase.
I’ve never had any great urge to go back and re-read it, as it might irritate me now, so it’s been relegated to the back of my brain along with all those Vonnegut and Brautigan novels.
I’m a great fan of his early roman a clef social novel, POINT COUNTERPOINT. Lovely characters, entertaining story, and a nice window into London circa 1929.
My favorite is “Antic Hay,” 1923. Lighter than most of his books. The description from bookfinder.com: “A young Oxford tutor, tired of his staid British life, takes off with some Bohemian companions on a wild and daring bachanalian adventure.”
After you read his novels, try reading “Moksha” (sp?), which is a short biography. He really was a fascinating character. IIRC, he died on November 22, 1963 (the day of the Kennedy assasination) and asked that he be given a dose of LSD as he lay dying.
Coolness. I think I’ll try picking up Ape and Essence some time, then. Thanks, you guys are the greatest.