Is 1984 Worth My Time?

1984 By George Orwell

I am an Education major at school.  We have a professor who has a subscription to scholastic.  Every now and then she picks a helper to do the work for this subscription.  She picks a new helper when her current helper goes into student teaching.  The helper basically puts the order forms out, collects them, orders the books, and then passes the books out.  The helper then gets points to spend on scholastic, based on how much money you raise scholastic, and then the helper orders books, for free.  I am the helper and I have been building my collection of young adult / high school literature.  This is the first book I finished from that collection.

In high school we were expected to read 1984.  I did not.  I was not much into reading at that time, well I was, but for some reason assigned reading just seemed like work, and that was not what I wanted to read, instead I read mostly Harry Potter throughout high school. I wish I would have read this book then, like I was supposed to.

It is a fairly dense book.  Not much dialog, and lots of introspective thoughts.  Orwell created a very believable environment.  So believable, in fact, that  it could happen.  I think that is why it is such a successful book.  It is so easy to draw parallels with the book and the real world.  Even more scary than that, is the fact that it was written in 1949.  Orwell seemed to know what the future held for us if things do not change.  Yes the year 1984 came and went, but the year is ambiguous, it could be 2084 or 2149, it does not matter.  What does matter is the intuitiveness he showed in writing what the world could look like.  I enjoyed it very much and I think some of you will as well.