Feature Fridays

Today's classic is Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley.

"Community, Identity, Stability" is the motto of Aldous Huxley's utopian World State. Here everyone consumes daily grams of soma, to fight depression, babies are born in laboratories, and the most popular form of entertainment is a "Feelie," a movie that stimulates the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. Though there is no violence and everyone is provided for, Bernard Marx feels something is missing and senses his relationship with a young women has the potential to be much more than the confines of their existence allow. Huxley foreshadowed many of the practices and gadgets we take for granted today--let's hope the sterility and absence of individuality he predicted aren't yet to come.

If you've read it, take a quiz to test your memory.

If not, you can read it online at Classic Reader.

Did you know? It's #5 on Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Have you read Brave New World or anything else by Huxley?

Thoughts for Thursday

What's your favorite book title?

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

Christopher is 15 and lives in Swindon with his father. He has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. He is obsessed with math, science and Sherlock Holmes but finds it hard to understand other people. When he discovers a dead dog on a neighbour's lawn he decides to solve the mystery and write a detective thriller about it. As in all good detective stories, however, the more he unearths, the deeper the mystery gets - for both Christopher and the rest of his family.

Weekly Word Wednesdays

venustation
n.
act of causing to become beautiful or handsome

The venustation of Ugly Betty caused much envy amongst the office staff.

I bet this word came from Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays (started on Should Be Reading) asks you to:

Grab your current read (or a book on your shelf that you've read or been wanting to read). Let the book fall open to a random page. Share two (or a few) teaser sentences from that page. Don't forget to share the title and author of the book in case someone is teased into reading. Please avoid spoilers!

I've posted my teaser below. Post yours in the comment section if you'd like to share as well!

And if Olympia thinks about her unknown son every day, she thinks of Haskell even more, for she has more of him to remember and thus to imagine. It is as though he, too, becomes a habit ingrained upon the bones: Her reveries of him are constant, though often vague and unformed.

p. 233 of Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve

Movie Mondays

Fried Green Tomatoes

Book, 1987 by Fannie Flagg

Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s: of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women--of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present--for Evelyn and for us--will never be quite the same again.

Movie, 1991 directed by Jon Avnet

Features: Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary-Louise Parker and Mary Stuart Masterson

Tagline: The secret of life? The secret's in the sauce.

Awards: Nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Jessica Tandy) and for Best Screenplay (Fannie Flagg)

Did you know? The "Whistle Stop Café" is loosely based on a real-life restaurant, the Irondale Café in Alabama.

Have you read the book or seen the movie?