"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world." 1984 by George Orwell, Chap 10

I finished 1984 last night. It was really good.

It was a moving piece, I knew that it would be when I started it. I just didn't think it'd be this stirring, I was thinking about it all night long. I really enjoyed some of the arguments for and against self-reality and consciousness that were presented by O'Brian and Smith during Smith's re-training process. Really thought-provoking stuff there, and I suggest everyone read it right now.

I really liked the fact that it never got preachy and overbearing, never felt like some sort of propaganda churned out by those in power. As things tend to do.

So, that's one more classic-novel-notch in my belt. I'm trying to break last summer's record of reading 20 books.

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Just for my own amusement (and to help me keep track of where my mind has been lately)... These are some of the books on my list:


Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Native Son, Richard Wright
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
A Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemmingway
The World According to Garp, John Irving
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
Exodus, Leon Uris
2001 : A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
Roots, Alex Haley
The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
Deliverance, James Dickey
The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad

Any other suggestions would be great!