This weekend I finally got through Huxley's 'A Brave New World'. It was hard to get through at first, as previously mentioned but it wasn't bad in the end! Not my favorite book but I was really happy to find that I was capable of getting most of the the Shakespeare references, in particular his 'The Tempest', which I had to learn off by heart for a school production last March (standing ovation for my English teacher). I got goosebumps when John gets all excited about going to London, and quotes Miranda's speech: 'O wonder...O brave new world that has such goodly creatures in it...' Or something along those lines, to which I, Prospero, had to respond: '`Tis new to thee'. Then all the witty references of chastity and purity to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and Othello, I'm pretty sure, as well as part of Hamlet's famous monologue, 'To be or not to be, whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer...'. John is a pretty awesome character. You feel sorry for him, so good looking, high cheekbones, dirty blonde hair, a bit scrawny but his self confidence draws one's attention away from that (that was how I imagined him at least!) And let's not forget extremely intelligent and keen, an avid Shakespeare reader and a man with morals and principals people should envy and strive to follow. HOWEVER, Huxley's constant reference to Shakespeare is...too constant? Sometimes the guy just seems pedantic, as if he were trying too hard to make a point of showing off his extreme literary knowledge. It reminded me a lot of Fowle's 'The Fremnch Lieutenant's Woman', where Fowle's struggles to shut up and get on with the novel. About forty per cent of the book is the author going on about history and general culture in a tone in which franakly, you feel like closing the book and putting it away in a safe, close the safe, eat the key and never think about the book again. Luckily for him, he is a good writer, and 'The French Lietenant's Woman' has a style which is extremely attractive to the reader, at least, to me. I thought the ending was brilliant (or should I say, endings?).
 Anyway, so that was my experience with Huxley's 'A Brave New World'. It's definitely a necessary book to have read at some point in your life, probably when undergoing religious apathy...it speaks to one, in that sense, if you let it speak to you.
Keep expressing!