Book Review: 1984
I was a lousy student in high school. I won't say how long ago that was, but it was a while ago. I got decent grades - decent enough to get me into college. But the tragedy of it was I never really applied myself. If I had applied myself, I might have made the leap from being an adequate student to being an outstanding one.
For the last three or four years I have been playing catch-up, trying to get to everything I was supposed to read years ago but never actually did.
I just finished reading George Orwell's 1984 for the first time last Wednesday night. I found it to be prescient, internally logical, and convincing. It is, as of last Wednesday, my very favorite book. I hope to return to it again, and I hope the world around me when I do bears less of a resemblance to the world of 1984, but only time will tell.
Favorite quote: "But after reading it he knew better than before that he was not mad. Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad." George Orwell, 1984
for me I was an avid reader in high school but was a shitty student ... me and my parents were kind of shocked when I got into college. I read this in HS but really fell in love with it in college. Others of the distopian style that I like are "Brave New World," "Clock Work Orange," and even "Ape and Essence."
ReplyDeleteWow, you never read 1984? Mad future societies were all the rage in our high school curriculum!
ReplyDeleteTo give credit to our literature department at the old place, I wonder if this emphasis on dystopian societies helped to inform my bleak and depressive worldview?
The only book I didn't read in high school was Oliver Twist, out of protest because our new Engligh Lit teacher switched it up and cut Wuthering Heights from the readings. I wanted me some brooding on the English moors!
No, it is true. I've been a literary and intellectual fraud all these years. As for semi-sci fi, bleak future dystopias, I also finished Brave New World for the first time recently. Didn't care for it. By comparison, I felt that Orwell shows you, while Huxley tells you.
ReplyDeleteI just ordered It Can't Happen Here and I think my next book read may be a Scottish one called Bad Faith, a kind of what if the government were a right-wing theocracy affair.