15 August 2014

Review: 1984

[The cover looks super sketchy to me in the editing box because it's white. I'm sorry if it still looks bizarre on the home page.]
Reviewer: Kelsey
Author: George Orwell
Format: Really old, hand-me-down paperback
Pages: 326
Rating (based on nothing more than how much I liked it, entertainment value): 7.5 out of 10

Summary (I'm watching you Goodreads): Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell's chilling prophecy about the future. 

While 1984 has come and gone, Orwell's narrative is more timely that ever. 1984 presents a "negative utopia", that is at once a startling and haunting vision of the world — so powerful that it's completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of entire generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions — a legacy that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

Thoughts: I despise reviewing classics or super famous works because, really, who am I to say anything about novels like this. I wish I could write something that was profound but I really doubt that I have anything to say that hasn't already been said...not that I have anything intelligent to say about this novel at all.

My dad warned me that I wouldn't like it at all but a hundred pages in and I was pretty interested in what was happening. The world was interesting. I enjoyed  was intrigued by the idea of the novel. It was scary how similar it is to present day. I mean, there isn't as much censorship though it exists. I could connect it a lot to things that were happening in the world today. It was really terrifying actually. I was impressed by Orwell's ability to predict the future.

This novel, to me, was like the young adult of the classics. It felt more like a dystopian novel that I might read now than something that was written in 1948. It didn't seem like other classics I've read in the past that are so complicated as to be un-understandable. It wasn't impossible for me to understand the language in this novel either, thank God. My problem with classics is that they are always a million pages and impossible to follow the dialogue because I don't speak 1800, heck I hardly speak 2014! This novel didn't have the same problem for me.

If you are on the boarder about whether or not you want to read this novel. I think you should do it. It was scary and could happen in the future. So much of it was like present day. It was easy to understand. If you haven't spent a lot of time reading classics because they seem like too much of an undertaking, this is the book for you. It's just long enough, just short enough, just easy enough to follow along with. 

The end nearly broke my heart in two. It wasn't the "aw" kind of heartbreak. It was the "really?" and "I can't take this" and the "Why would the author do this to me?" kind of heartbreak. Nobody can claim that the author didn't stick to the true story, the heart of the story, or that he did what he had to do. That said, after reading Harry Potter and The Hunger Games and Divergent, the ending was a bit of a let down. Yet, what was I expecting? A modern ending on an old novel? That just doesn't happen. If it did, the story would be lost.

So: This is the easiest to read classic I've read yet. It was like the YA of classics which was a nice break for me while on vacation (I hadn't opened the novel yet and was very worried I would hate it and not be able to follow what was happening). Stick with it and let me know what you think about it! 

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