[books 2010] 1984
Jul. 11th, 2010 07:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro45. 1984 by George Orwell
This month's Bibliogoths selection.
I haven't read this since I was an undergraduate (in the same week as We and Brave New World. I can be forgiven for not remembering which is which).
It's much better than I remembered. I was particularly impressed that Orwell explains why nobody can remember life before Ingsoc - one thing that pisses me off about many near-future novels is that they can be set as little as 10 years in the future but nobody remembers what life was like before whatever event changed society.
He does interesting things with and about language, which is always cool.
However, knowing now that England in the 1950s was a drab place with rationing and shortages, which I wasn't fully cognisant of the first time round, I can't help reading the book as a compendium of Orwell's neuroses and hangups.
So - um - yeah - important book and a very good read.
This month's Bibliogoths selection.
I haven't read this since I was an undergraduate (in the same week as We and Brave New World. I can be forgiven for not remembering which is which).
It's much better than I remembered. I was particularly impressed that Orwell explains why nobody can remember life before Ingsoc - one thing that pisses me off about many near-future novels is that they can be set as little as 10 years in the future but nobody remembers what life was like before whatever event changed society.
He does interesting things with and about language, which is always cool.
However, knowing now that England in the 1950s was a drab place with rationing and shortages, which I wasn't fully cognisant of the first time round, I can't help reading the book as a compendium of Orwell's neuroses and hangups.
So - um - yeah - important book and a very good read.
