The 30-Day Challenge: Day Twenty-Three

So, I've tossed around the idea of playing along with this facebook trend for some time. But I've never really enjoyed following trends. However, my apparent narcissism keeps bringing me back to it.

That being said, I'm going to participate, but I'm going to do it here, instead of on facebook. (The goal is to satisfy my narcissism, as well as motivate me to start using my blog again.) Enjoy!

Day 23 - A picture of your favourite book.

Well, today's been a momentous day. Today was the first day I took a photo solely for the sake of the 30-Day Challenge. Then it became the first photo I uploaded to my Mac. It then became the first photo I opened in iPhoto and the first photo I then edited with the software. It then became the first photo I uploaded to facebook and emailed from iPhoto. Hopefully you enjoy it, because I've been suffering a few growing pains making this transition and today I felt frustration trying to navigate the Finder...

My favourite book will always be Brave New World. I adore it with every ounce of my being. I don't think there's a more fascinating character in literature than John the Savage. I also feel, beyond the beautiful and chilling dystopian tropes the novel, there is another philosophical discussion bursting through. The most beautiful quotations come from these ideas. Near the end of the novel, there is a lengthy--two chapters, if I remember correctly--conversation between John and and the World Controller, Mustapha Mond, about the worldviews of the brave new world John has been thrust into. I actually used passages from this section in an essay that helped me win the Lilly Endowment.

It don't know what it is about this book, but something just has always piqued my fancy. It says so much about society, mankind, and the effects of religion and emotion on the human condition. I feel it's only appropriate to end with a quotation from the novel...

"We prefer to do things comfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to life in constant apprechension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.

"I claim them all."