Brave New World the third most challenged book in America

[Playinghardball]

Source: Raw Story
By Eric W. Dolan

Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World placed third in the American Library Association’s (ALA) Top Ten List of the Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2010.

The most common reason the futuristic novel, written by the British author in 1931 and published in 1932, was requested to be restricted or removed from libraries was because of its alleged insensitivity, offensive language, racism, and sexually explicit content.

Brave New World is set in the London of 2540 AD, where mass production has inundated nearly every aspect of society, free-love is mandatory and residents keep themselves in a happy stupor by self-medicating with an antidepressant-like drug called soma.

Unlike George Orwell's famous dystopian novel 1984, Huxley's novel envisioned a totalitarian government than used distractions and pleasures to suppress the population rather than brute force and propaganda.

read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/12/brave-new-world-the-third-most-challenged-book-in-america/

[palm_to_forehead]

1. People love to cite 1984...

...but Brave New World is much closer to reality than anything in that book.

[ejpoeta]

6. guess i have another book to add to my list after i finish the handmaid's tale.

and that is creeping me out.

[Marr]

14. Depends on where you live, and how far you step out of line.

Ask Bradley Manning if the US is more Brave New World or 1984. Or an Iraqi.

[palm_to_forehead]

18. Most certainly

While the aspects of 1984 that exist in society hit you upside the head, the aspects of 1984 that make it realistic sneak in while you aren't watching.

population control - “abortion is the best option because we couldn't take care of them”

the world state – UN

consequences of progression in reproductive technology - aborting fetuses that have genetic defects

increasing differences in classes – the Chinese are our gamas, deltas, and epsilons while our alphas and betas couldn't be bothered with working in such conditions

consume consume consume

recreational sex

Deconstruction of the family

Soma - recreational drug use, both legal and illegal

it goes on and on.

[catnhatnh]

2. You call it "dystopian"...

...while others call it "plan B".

[MisterP]

3. note the readers' choice for top 100 books:

http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/100-best-novels/
1. Atlas Shrugged
2. The Fountainhead
3. Battlefield Earth

[Richard D]

4. vote bombing . . .

. . . by wing-nuts and scientologists.

[PufPuf23]

12. That's creepy. Rand and El Ron. Blech. nt

[Daphne08]

5. Unbelievable. I read it in high school

In fact, it was required reading as was 1984 among many others.

Of course, that was in the 60s.

[davidthegnome]

7. Going to have to read that one

I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't.

[bemildred]

9. Huxley is well worth a read.

And not just BNW.

"Morality is always the product of terror; its chains and strait-waistcoats are fashioned by those who dare not trust others, because they dare not trust themselves, to walk in liberty. -- Aldous Huxley

Faith's just organized and directed stupidity. It may remove a mountain or two by dint of mere obstinate butting; but it's blinkered, it can't see that if you move mountains, you don't destroy them, you merely shove them from one place to another. -- A.H. Eyeless in Gaza

Means determine ends; and must be like the ends proposed. Means intrinsically different from the ends proposed achieve ends like themselves, not like those they were meant to achieve. Violence and war will produce a peace and an social organization having the potentialities for more violence and war. - A.H. Eyeless in Gaza

One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfils our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous. Sweet and decorous to murder, lie, torture, for the sake of the fatherland. Eyeless in Gaza -- Aldous Huxley 1936

[bemildred]

8. Too realistic for our modern "sensitivities". nt

[knitter4democracy]

10. I've taught it and never had a problem.

The students love it. It draws them in with the orgies and drugs, but then it turns all that on its head, and it makes them think about how we control the populace, especially teens, today. I love that book, personally.

Another awesome read: Hunger Games (trilogy--you need to read all three) by Suzanne Collins. Even darker and scarier than BNW, I think, and amazingly likely to happen.

[postulater]

16. Amazing. I just found that Collins trilogy on my wife's bookshelf.

We rarely buy books, but she must have just purchased those three.

Our local Borders just closed.

[WinkyDink]

11. I taught it. There is no "sexually explicit content."

[PufPuf23]

13. Aldous Huxley was a fine mind, man, and writer.

I recommended any of Huxley's writings as he was contemporary but had a deeper mind and greater creativity than Orwell (that in Pig Farm and 1984 is a literary and philosophical cultural giant regdrs the human condition).

[Keith Bee]

15. "Distractions"

OMG why isn't Obama showing his birth certificate? NO GAY MARRIAGE! I wonder who's gonna win on American Idol?

Yep, The Controllers have this country exactly where they want it.

[Taverner]

17. "Brave New World" for the upper and upper middle classes

"1984" for the lower and lower middle classes