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CHAPTER 0 !!
LOL. I am waiting on this to come in from library could be a bloody long wait though. I am 5th in queue, so that could be up to a 5mth wait as books can be borrowed for a 4wk period !!!!! May go hunt it down instead :)
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CHAPTER 0
I was very lucky. We had this book at home - DH had to read it when he was at school some 25 yrs ago. I noted wryly that the book still bears the school library stamp on the inside cover!! he tells me he loved it so much, he just held onto it.....norty!
LOL Hayseed, that's funny. There were a lot of school books I would have loved to keep, but I was too much of a goody-goody! I might get into this tonight.
Yeah I was a goody goody too - never swiped a thing.
Oooh, you picked a book I have! I'll have to join in as soon as I read it again... guess I have something to do while the washing machine is going when I get home! I ended up buying all the school books I liked too! Although I was so indoctrinated with To Kill a Mockingbird I can still close my eyes and read it, bonus!
Actually, just having re-read the early bits of 1984 (another brain book!) I get more and more scared, our newspapers actually do a 2-minute hate.
CHAPTER NOUGHT
This book is one of my faves! I might have to go pick it up from somewhere again so I can join in. It's been 22 years since I read it. Hehe Hayseed at your DH lifting it from school. I can understand the urge!
Ryn, I also love TKAM ... one of those rare situations where the film is actually as good as the book!
Chapter 0
I started reading it last night and I had splitting headache so I shouldn't have bothered because I couldn't tell you a single thing I read. I will have another go when the girls are asleep today.
Well, I saw part of the 1984 opera last night - the first part - cripes! In the book you do get that people are so indoctrinated, but the opera, it was so scary just hearing people sing about how great Newspeak is because "fewer words = less thinking"... and the cheering at the public hangings was gruesome! I didn't see it all because I was tired, but it is something I'll have to watch out for again. DH hasn't read the book so I spent quite a while telling him what was going on between songs, which was quite good for my recap too.
Where did you see that opera? On telly? What channel?
It was on BBC4 last month, they had a big "1984 night" thing going on. I'm not sure if they'll show it again, or show it in Australia, but it is worth a watch if you get the chance.
How's everyone getting on with the book? I don't want to post about it in case I'm further on than everyone else and ruin surprises.
Oh, I didn't even look to see where you are located Ryn!! LOL. Chances are, it wasn't on our tellys!!! LOL.
But we have pay tv in our house and get BBC shows via UKTV so maybe????? one day!
Yeah I'm about 3/4 through the book. I guess one of us should just start talking about the earlier chapters to get the talk going.
Some of the stuff in the book freaks me out how it is a bit eerily like today's society, but was written so long ago!
Yes, it really struck me 10 years ago and it's gotten worse since. However, I quite like the idea of no makeup - OK, it would have annoyed me back in my makeup selling days, but I would love to not have the hassle.
Did anyone else think that this is the way the British govt. have been trying to go for the last 8 years or so? It's just so freaky, they want to control where people live and they really do take all your money in taxes and you have to apply for it back, so they give you back what they think you deserve... it's just soooooo Orwellian and people only use the phrase "Big Brother" about speed cameras or the stupid TV show (no comment on Aussie BB, the UK one is dumb though) when they should look at govt. policy.
OK, here's a quick question: would you rather live with all your "needs" provided for inside Big Brother's protection, quixotic as that may be (with very little chocolate), or would you rather live outside with all the risks? And why?
It's scary, when you think like that, of the lure of Big Brother and knowing that you will have a house and food, even though they control your thinking, rather than chancing it all outside. Though I'd still pick outside and freedom over thought control, our lives are slowly being moulded into letting someone else take responsibility for us and liking that.
Yeah, the way our lives are monitored already sometimes gives you pause for thought. The fact that we are living less and less in a paper money society and the ability to trace expenditure on credit cards sometimes just freaks me out. but I use my credit cards more and more these days for everyday living. Sucked in by the accumulation of frequent flyer points that I wiull never use (I think I have enough for a first class flight to Singapore!).
One thing that initially struck me as strange in the book though is how people couldn;t remember back only 4 years as to who their country was at war with and they accepted that the way it currently is, is the way it always has been. But then, I got thinking that a lot of people (in today's society too) just don't want to know what is going on, and are happy to be told what is going on (and that is is ok) rather than questioning it for themselves.
I'm quite interested to get to the end of the book to see how it turns out. I just can't see how it can end.....
Oh and Ryn, I'd want to live in a world of my own choices, one that came with risks. Because I'm such as questioner and find it difficult to easily conform.
I think it's more in the UK, but there are people who don't remember back to even before the last election, people who don't know who Tony Bliar is, people to whom reality TV is more important than finding out with whom we are at war... and this is encouraged by the media and the government. (Also, Islam isn't a religion, just a collection of "bad guys and terrorists" which really annoys and upsets me.) In my age group (I still class myself as "early 20s") there are people who don't understand why they should vote, or think that voting is just a popularity contest, like on reality TV. They don't understand it affects their lives! And yes, if I can trace exactly what my DH spends via the on-line bank, then how do we know others can't do the same? I really don't trust our government enough not to.
Having said that, I'm sure there's a portion of the UK who think we're still at war with the Germans, so maybe it's just a generational thing and the same types of people will, in their 60s, still be "at war" with the Middle East and not trust any Muslims. My FiL, for example, won't eat any food that's from France or Germany; he will also not travel outside the UK "just in case". He's such a Rosbif - OK, I'm not French but he really is! I think the 1984 world has eliminated the intelligensia and been populated with people like that (not that FiL is thick, far from it, but just the small-minded attitudes he often has) and the people who think that voting is a popularity contest, quite easy to do really. TB and his cronies are trying to do that to the UK.
As for the ending... the last line just stays with me forever. Up there with the last line in Tolkein's The Two Towers for most haunting last lines ever. I hadn't read the book for almost 10 years and could still remember that line and how scary it was.
Oooh don't say!!! I'm just getting to the interesting bits now - not that the whole book isn't interesting!! LOL
It's been over 20 years since I read this, but I agree that some things stay with you. I found it eerily prescient even then. Nowadays it's just downright scary!
As an aside, one thing I find interesting about politics in supposedly democratic countries today is that there is so little difference between the major parties. There is no real choice for people ... whoever you vote for is going to end up selling you out to international corporations so I think people feel that there isn't much point. To a certain extent, I understand why we have large scale apathy.
What concerns me too is that if anyone actually came forward with decent representative policies, they would probably be assassinated or otherwise removed or discredited. After all, we can't have a little thing like citizen's rights standing in the way of profits!
This might have sounded paranoid once but sadly it is now accepted as "just the way things are" by pretty much everyone.
Now I've got to get my hands on this and start reading it again right away. I've procrastinated long enough!
Finished it! Gawd........quite sad really. didn't end like I thought, but then, I wasn't sure how it was going to end.
Did you end up screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOO"? I think I almost did, but it may have been in the small hours of the morning and I should have been sleeping, so didn't want to wake my parents.
WHOLE BOOK - NO REAL CHAPTER
Ha ha ha...yeah, sort of. Have to admit to a feeling of flatness at the ending ( how it ended, not at the writing).
What still stikes me as odd, is now that I am a mum, I find it difficult to comprehend how Big Bro and the Party was able to surpress maternal and paternal instinct ..ie, that you work to acheive a better world/outcome/future/existance for your kids. I mean, I would honestly go to the ends of the earth for Pup and I can't imagine ever bowing to the will of someone else (higher authority or not) if it ever meant putting his future in jeopardy.
I may have missed it, and it may have been implied how it was done, but I sort of think that some aspects of human nature (such as a mum's love for her kids) was not truelly appreciated in the writing of this book.
And the other thing that I thought was incredible was that (and I hope I understood this correctly) this "society" was constructed within people's lifetimes (ie within 20 or 30 years or so). The main character at least could remember snippets of a "normal existence" from his childhood, so all this BB stuff (ooooh BB = Big Brother and BB = Belly Belly....:eek: co-incidence!???!!!) happened in his lifetime. And he wasn't that old. Has politics EVER acheived anything so fast IRL??? LOL.:p
Looking at British Politics and the downfall of English Society in the last 10-15 years... yes, politics has managed to achieve a complete balls-up of everything very quickly! We've gone from something imperfect to something that doesn't work at all. A lot of people out there in their 40s and 50s hate Bliar more than they ever did Thatcher, which is really saying something.
As for maternal instinct... OK, our government is encouraging teenagers to have children by giving them free houses (needless to say, it's hard enough for two professionals to buy a house together these days, having a baby at 14-15 would have been a good option for me, at least then I wouldn't have to pay back my Uni loan, so much for "education is free" you lying...), and there are a lot of horror stories every day about their lack of maternal instincts. While I'm sure there are great 14-year-old mothers out there, there are many who just want the free house and to live off the state, and these people are encouraged to breed.
However, I agree - even in another 10 or so years' time, most people with any intelligence my age would be able to remember pre-BB life. Makes you wonder if they rounded up all the older people and intelligent people of a certain age and killed them. Or maybe they just went into politics, that being the only escape route these days.
I am about halfway through. Only picked it up last Friday as a copy was finally available at the library. Can't really say it is engaging me that much, but never really been much into political things etc. Shall continue to read it though.
Will announce a new book next month, got a bit busy this month LOL.
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I am finding it really hard to get into this book, I'm just not in the right headspace to read it right now.
I found it a bit hard to get into as well...so you're not alone girls. I kept thinking "how could society end up like this" and it was putting me off.
I can't say that I "enjoyed" the book, but I'm glad I read it.
Wow, I really did enjoy it; couldn't put it down! It's really scary, but not in a horror-film sort of way, and I really love that sort of thing. I could really empathise with Winston and felt that the writing was such that you could easily paint this happening in your own town... everything in a dull, uniform grey, political posters for Big Brother everywhere, and when he was locked up I started to get a bit claustrophobic! Gave me the shivers.
Haven't got to him being locked up yet, he is still romping with Julia where I am up too LMAO. It is a quiet weekend here so hopefully I will get close to finishing it.
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You know what I reckon is funny? In a lot of things that are posted in the future (ie this book, Star Trek, many futuristic movies), everyone has the same clothes. Don't you think that this is....strange? Why? How? Who decides that everyone in the world or that society (usually a large on in these flicks) should dress one way. And they are always a jumpsuity type thing!! LOL. Must be a man who dreams up these clothes. No female would ever have other women in jumpsuits PMSL!! (not least because of the difficultly going to the toilet and then having to sit there in the starkers while the whole jumpsuit is around your ankles!!)
I'll second the ugly star trek clothes! Even the non-spaceship people (or off-duty people) wear the ugliest things possible. Even the wedding dresses are yuk! (but the uniforms were usually a 2-piece thing, geek here can name the few times they weren't, all except for the tiny dresses.)
At least in 1984 it was supposed to be an aid to repression, but I hate uniforms!
And am I the only person who really can't stand Julia? She just did my nut in.
She seems to be away with the fairies :)
I am getting there slowly. Up to where they have just joined the brotherhood.
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Yeah, Julia is STRANGE.
I finished it finally and gave my rating in the other thread.
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