DougP 2010-08-28

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I've read excerpts here and there. I saw the movie years ago. But I never read the book until now; the book is a monster. This is not a work of pure art or beauty, but it is a masterpiece of ideas and imagination. It is deliberate and powerful and still totally relevant. In a way it's a political treatise disguised as a novel, and it will have you nodding your head as you consider the state of the world today - perpetual war, sophisticated systems of propaganda, distorted news, doublespeak, the surveillance state... the list of parallels goes on and on.

It is also a masterful novel, aside from the brilliance of Orwell's ideas. When the telescreen "surprised" Winston and Julia, I almost fell out of my chair.

Certainly not a fun read, it is grim and bleak and wretched. I have to wonder what possessed Orwell to conceive such a hellish world. But boy is it convincing. Some of the violence seems almost gratuitous, as if he was taking some perverse pleasure in it. But again it works so well.

Neil D SH 2010-08-17

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I've always heard about this book. In my English classes the Sci-Fi geeks would do nothing but rave about it. At work, the conspiracy theorists use it as a jumping off platform. And, for me, it was a good read. I loved many of the powerful descriptions; things like, "...and they would sit around the table looking at one another with extinct eyes, like ghost fading at cock crow." I do have to admit that I thought the book had its dull moments, and that other times I thought it was terrifyingly harsh. By the end, I found myself sort of lost in the things unsaid. And, finally, at the last sentence, I realized that the book that had taken me so long to read because of lack of time, was stunning. I finished in it the morning, and by that evening, I was reeling over Winston's bullet. This is a book that I intend to read again. I hope that I am able to devote myself to it next time. One more note to myself: Blair (Orwell) must have set out writing this story with the ending already set out in front of him. I don't think he could have just gotten there be happens-chance.

E. J. Ahlquist 2010-08-09

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The numerous references to this novel in pop culture make this a must read. In addition, the discussion in the afterword by Erich fromme was well informed added to the presence of this novel. I definitely recommend it.

Lisa Braun 2010-07-28

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I'm really glad I saw this book in my ma's house and decided to grab it for a vacation. It was a great summer read and it kept me intrigued the whole time.

R. Hogen 2010-07-23

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This book is "about totalitarianism" and "about socialism" in the same way that "Star Wars" is about combat spaceships or "The Matrix" is about computer technology. If you read the book it becomes quite clear that the totalitarian regime depicted bears no resemblance whatsoever to socialism (it's the opposite, a totalitarian oligarchy), so when people say this book is a warning against socialism they are revealing their own practice of doublethink and so the warning of this book becomes even more important. "1984" is about the ways in which the human mind can become silently (and forcibly) stolen from an individual, and therefore from the masses, through manipulation of media, perception of scarcity, scapegoat-targetted engagement of strong emotions, and anti-intellectualism, among other things. All of these influences exist in our Western world, not merely in Stalin's Russia or National Socialist (Nazi) Germany of the past. The afterword by Erich Fromm should also be required reading. I wish I could find this edition (with that afterword) in hardcover form.