Book 10 - 1984 by George Orwell

Reading date - May 2020

I have the exact version that is in the picture below (I use the actual covers of the books I have to show which one I have read).  I thought (and still do) that the censored cover was really cool.

George Orwell is one of those authors that EVERYONE seems to love and EVERYONE has read anything he has ever written.  Or so it would seem..when I asked people closer to me about Orwell and their experiences, an altogether different story emerged..a story I could identify with.  His work is hard to read..it is dry and sometimes quite scary, but in a tension kind of way like The Shinning, not a scary kind of Poe way.



Random fact: Back when Orwell was simply Eric Blair, he taught at my dad's school but years before my dad was a student there.

For some reason, I thought Orwell was a staunch Socialist but he was actually just a social commentator..as I found out after reading his scathing review of the workers in Wigan in The Road to Wigan Pier.

The only ever Orwell book I've managed to read in "peace time" and without having to force myself through it is Animal Farm.  I would say that is his best work.  I follow an account on Twitter called George Orwell's Animal House and it basically searches Twitter for dumdums trying to own other people by saying "iF yoU haD rEaD aNiMaL hOuSE" instead of calling the book by its actual name cos what is life if you can't pretend to be smarter than strangers on the web?

Lord knows I tried and tried and tried to read 1984 many a time before but I just never took to it.  I tried to listen to the audiobook on Spotify but it was really scary (the music moreso than the words).  I fell asleep with it playing and had the worst nightmares.

I left it well alone for ages and then decided that if I couldn't read it when i was locked in the house, I'd never be able to read it.

I started reading...got past chapter 1...quite liked it.  Got past chapter 2...started enjoying it.  Knew he would be in trouble once he found a friend and a bird he liked the look of.  I really liked the following two quotes from the book:

  1. "...mass of imbecile enthusiasms"
  2. "Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing" aka what the current govt has done to a lot of dunces who don't realise that the govt wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.

How Orwell guessed so much of what will happen is beyond me.  There are so many instances in the book where actual history is wiped out and rewritten to match what actually happened.  

The book messes with your mind but the last two chapters are the worst for this.  I struggled  to get through them for that alone.

I've now read Animal Farm, Road to Wigan Pier (parts are dryer than month old Weetabix) and 1984.  I don't think I'll read any more Orwell.

Would I  say run out and read it? Not really.  I won't say I'm dense because I'm not but I can see why it was so hyped up when it first came out..now, not so much.  I did learn that the concept of Room 101 comes from this book.  I loved that show back when it was one guest and it had a decent presenter.


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