After about thirteen years I decided to give this a reread and realized I did forget a lot of it. It took longer to read due to the parallels between the state of the world and it's themes. I kept having to put it down for a few days. Most of the book is a simple read with only the last third becoming emotionally more difficult.
It's a disheartening book but I think it's something people should read regardless, at least once.
Thanks for reading!
Next up Brave New World, fills in any gaps Orwell missed in our modern dystopia.
Dang, I do have a copy but I don't know if I want to go back to back dystopian or just rip off the bandaid to get through it.
I also have Fahrenheit 451, which I really do like, but I haven't read that one in over a decade as well. I'm thinking I should just go ahead and reread them. Thanks for the motivation!
I used to find BNW an easier read because it's not presented as a soul crushing authoritarian like 1984, but revisiting it gets heavier and worse each time.
watches the news
"Well."
Now I actually do want to read it.
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death is where that quote is from. It's not a fiction book, more an analysis of how the entertainment industry has changed public discourse in 1985, but I still found it an interesting (and concerning) read.
Brave New World is definitely the more prescient of the two.
1984 has elements to it that have come true, but the overall theme of BNW of oversaturation of entertainment is definitely accurate to reality nowadays.