Which one did you like better?

I liked the writing style of 1984, thought the story was ok. Read it back in highschool and never plan on reading it again. Unless there is some important reason too. But I can't think of any reasons important enough now :-)

F451-I HATED this. To be honest, I've never liked any of Bradbury's stuff. His style of writing is very offputting to me and I get annoyed by his choice of phrasing and wording. So even when he tells an interesting story, it is ruined for me by the style. However, I didn't even like the story of F451. I thought it was the paranoid fears of a writer seeing his livelihood going down the tubes and writing a story blaming society instead of writing better :-)  Yeah, I'm not a Bradbury fan at all.

Brave New World.  This is the one I "enjoyed" most. I found it well written but I thought it was a bit graphic in places.

All of these though, I'll probably never read again. I've read them once, thought about them, dissected them in my head and moved on.

I would be interested to hear if there are people who read these for "fun"?

Hard to say...I like all of them for their own reasons, and they probably affected me differently as I read them at different ages:

I read Fahrenheit 451 when I was pretty young...I don't remember exactly when, but I was a pre-teen.  As such, it was one of the first "adult" SF books I'd read and it is special to me, even though I am sure I didn't understand it fully at the time.

I read Brave New World in high school...this might be my favorite purely as reading material.  I think it's a great book with a great vision...especially considering it is he oldest of the three.

I didn't read 1984 until I was in my 20's.  I thought it was by far the most depressing, but also the most real in a way...I know it's fashionable to compare our own government to Big Brother, but I was blown away by the similarity to real-life accounts of the former Soviet government's control of the media and education.

I  loved all three for different reasons, but if I had to choose Farenheit 451 would be my favorite. It's dark but hopeful -- or maybe not hopeful but at least not quite as hopeless as 1984. And I enjoy Bradbury's writing in general, so that might be swaying me a bit too.

Also wanted to mention that Island, another Huxley novel, is worth picking up if you are interested in utopian/dystopian fiction. I'm a huge fan of post-apocalypse and utopian/dystopian fic.

Brave New World is my favorite book of all time.  1984 is a great book and I honestly haven't read Fahrenheit 451 yet, but I just love Brave New World.  I'm a big fan of utopian/dystopian fiction, and it was just very interesting and thought provoking.

Jennifer, is "Island" just part of the title that you mentioned by Huxley?  I looked for that in posted and unposted and couldn't find it.

BTW I liked Brave New World the best.  It was part of a high school assignment but I would go back and read it for fun.

Anyone interested in dystopian novels should check out We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was the inspiration for 1984.

Never read it myself, but ....

Island (ISBN 0-06-008549-5) is the final book by English writer Aldous Huxley, published in 1962. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel Brave New World, itself often paired with George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The ideas that would become Island can be seen in a foreword he wrote in 1952 to the 20th anniversary edition of BNW:

If I were now to rewrite the book, I would offer the Savage a third alternative. Between the Utopian and primitive horns of his dilemma would lie the possibility of sanity... In this community economics would be decentralist and Henry-Georgian, politics Kropotkinesque co-operative. Science and technology would be used as though, like the Sabbath, they had been made for man, not (as at present and still more so in the Brave New World) as though man were to be adapted and enslaved to them. Religion would be the conscious and intelligent pursuit of man's Final End, the unitive knowledge of immanent Tao or Logos, the transcendent Godhead or Brahman. And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle – the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?"

I would have to say Farenheit 451 is my favorite.  I found it to be more of a warning to society of what could happen if you start banning books and how indvls could become almost nonthinking because of the lack of thought provoking books.  I think it's a great book expecially for book lovers.  I can't wait until my 11 year old so reads it to get his thoughts on it.  

  I have read other books by Ray Bradbury and although his style is different I think it is much deeper than some others. 

Of those three I liked Brave New World the best. But two dystopian novels which are even better are We (the precursor to them all) and This Perfect Day.

I can definitely say 451, I have a poster of a Ray Bradbury quote right above my bed

So, I'm a little late to the discussion, but....

I'm about half way through 451 right now.  and so far I LOVE it. 

I read 1984 about a year ago and really enjoyed it.

I read Brave New World in high school and don't really remember much of it, other than I didn't love it.  I read it quickly, but didn't think anything special about it.

I think my favorite is going to be between 451 and 1984 with some leaning towards 1984.  I don't think F451 is going to make me cry like 1984 did.  1984 also made me angrier and gave me more of an emotional response.  So far F451 is just making me think.  But l LOVE Bradbury's style and just the way he writes.

I guess I'd have to say I liked Farenheit best, but it's a really close call. I love Bradbury, but each of these books has so much to offer - they're all such strong social commentary, and vivid in their own respects.