Fast Read

Two days, and done already!  Wow - that went fast!

As I knew I would, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  My favorite quote, speaking about how "great" utopias are: "The nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness."  And therein lies the problem.  Utopias - no such thing.

Another great quote:  "I don't want comfort.  I want God.  I want poetry.  I want real danger.  I want freedom.  I want goodness.  I want sin."   Aah, don't we all?!

I am also reminded of Miranda Lambert's new single, "Automatic," where she reminisces on the "good old days," with lines like "stand in line to pay for gas" and "let's take a picture, the kind you gotta shake."  This song came to mind as John mused about creating something with his hands, "after all those weeks of idleness in London, with nothing to do, whenever he wanted anything, but to press a switch or turn a handle, it was pure delight to be doing something that demanded skill and patience."

And my favorite part of the book - how often Huxley talks about television where there was no such thing at that time!  I find that totally amazing.  There were people working on the concept of television at the time, but it was not an actual  thing until several years after this book was written.  It's totally cool that he had heard about the work being done and put it in his novel.  And in the same vein, you can easily equate the "synthetic music box" with radio, but I think it could be a premonition of the iPod, and the sound-track rolls and the reading machines sound an awful lot like cassette tapes, don't they?!

I just looked it up, and Huxley died the day JFK was shot - becoming just a footnote in history at that point since the news programs would have had other, more pressing news to cover.  His death probably would not have even been mentioned for several days because of JFK, but at least I know he lived long enough to see how ubiquitous television become in the homes of most Americans and, I assume, the British as well.

On to the next book - we're up to Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, originally published in 1936.  The biggest downside to having to read this is it's over 1000 pages - in hardback!  It's got to be easier to get through than Atlas Shrugged, so on I go.  I don't know anyone who doesn't know the basic plot of this book, so I'll just jump right into it and hope for the best.