Island

(4) There is a passage in my reading today, that definitely confused me and left me feeling lost in the sauce...There were characters that seemed to be fighting inner demons, even though the the entire population of the Island is a peaceful one. Perhaps it was the new visitor who crashed on the island while trying to find the people who live there...

I picked up this book, or at least downloaded the kindle version, after seeing it mentioned in both Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now and Practicing the Power of Now. He uses a reference to the Island, where there are birds that have been trained to constantly "chirp" "Attention. Here and Now. Attention. Here and Now." I am becoming more and more a believer of what Tolle has to say, as far as how to simply exist in the world, and I couldn't help but want to see what else this novel has to offer as far as Being Present, and a living in a society where everyone is "actually sane."

This will be my second time reading Island. I think I last read it sometime during my freshman year in college. I picked it up after getting hooked on Huxley; both his fiction and non-fiction. I haven't read any since, and I know of at least one of his philosophy books that I have brand new on my shelf 10+ years later.

What I'm most interested in my re-reading of this is to see how much maturity and "settling" into a set of values will mesh with what I remember the world view to be in Huxley's utopian novel. I can't remember much, but so far the first chapter brought back how much I liked Huxley's writing and the novels first great character: the birds that squawk "attention".