Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Animal Farm by George Orwell

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In five words: masterpiece, Stalin, dystopia, idealism, satire I have reread Orwell’s 1984 more times than I can admit. I think it (and he) is what started my lifelong love of dystopian fiction. Even though Animal Farm is much shorter, and I’m sure I read it in high school (only because it lives on my bookshelves in the “stuff from high school” area) I didn’t remember much about it. My kiddo came home with it from 9th grade and I grabbed my copy, ready to […]

Classic Sci-Fi: Should you read it? 1984

1984 by George Orwell

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CSF:SYRI? Background For the past couple years I’ve been working on my own little reading project. I love the sci-fi genre with my entire heart. I also went to a weird religious middle and high school and I missed reading a bunch of classics. A couple years ago I finally read Slaughterhouse 5 and y’all, it is great! What other classic sci-fi have I been missing out on, I wondered, and tried to research the best I could. Of course the internet has all kinds of […]

1984/Julia

1984 by George Orwell

Julia by Sandra Newman

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Over the years I have read 1984 maybe half a dozen times, always for class-related assignments when I was a student or when I was a teacher. It has probably been over 20 years since my last re-read, and I’m glad I picked it up again before reading Sandra Newman’s Julia, a take on 1984 from the point of view of Winston Smith’s lover. I have always found 1984 to be a challenging read; dystopian fiction is unsettling and the end of 1984 is tragic. […]

George Orwell

Burmese Days by George Orwell

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“U Po Kyin, Subdivisional Magistrate of Kyauktada, in Upper Burma, was sitting in his veranda.” George Orwell like Aldous Huxley is a victim of his own success. He’s most widely known for his novels 1984 and Animal Farm, but like Huxley he also wrote several other novels and a lot of nonfiction. I would say that Down and Out in London and Paris is a truly weird and wonderful book, and Homage to Catalonia is incredibly important. Burmese Days is not either really, but it […]

Some books by George Orwell

1984 by George Orwell

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Down and Out in London and Paris by George Orwell

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1984 – 5/5 Stars This is probably only my second or third time reading this book, and well it still is pretty much the one that always gets it right. For example, I had completely forgotten, or failed to connect that “memory hole” as a metaphor in language now is from this book. It’s the literal hole that leads to the incinerator. So what stands out to me now reading this book is a few moments of real brilliance that I particularly enjoyed about the […]

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this one, but this was really good

Animal Farm by George Orwell

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In my continuing quest to read all the books I should’ve read in high school but somehow talked my way out of, I read Animal Farm last week. In 1936, after publishing The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell went to Spain to fight against the Fascists being led by Francisco Franco. In 1931, the Spanish King, Alfonso XIII agreed to allow elections to decide the government of Spain. Overwhelmingly, the people of Spain voted to abolish the monarchy and form a liberal republic. Over […]



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