I've just read Brave New World for the first time since I was at skool.
It's crap
I made the same mistake last summer. I used to think it was great. This time round I thought it was pretty turgid. It might have been a brilliant dystopian fantasy once upon a time but now it seems incredibly dated, and doesn't even offer the consolation of being well written (unlike, say, HG Wells and Jules Verne).
I read the deconstruction of Hardy a few pages back with a disbelieving stare too. Most 'classics' leave me cold. Then again, I read Woolf's Orlando a few years ago and found the prose poetry fantastic.
I can't read Hardy. I find him unbearable. And not because I don't like books with a high misery quotient - I love George Eliot, for example, and Middlemarch is one of my favourite books ever. In a similar vein, I've also got Les Miserables on my to-read pile (in French, of course, pseud that I am).
I'm currently reading
A History Of The World In Six Glasses by Tom Standage, which is a clever idea well executed. The history aspect of it is a bit superficial (perhaps not surprising given the scope of the book in relation to its size), but it works as a good, broad overview and is written in a flowing, easy-to-read style.
d.