Not sure I can finish reading this book

[Debbi in Texas]

1984 by George Orwell. I'm not sure why I thought it would end well, but obviously it won't. Thinking about ditching it. Did you finish it?

[Okra]

I finished it.  Pretty depressing.  

[Dana]

Read it in 1984 :)

Yes, it's bleak, but I think it's excellent.

It does give some images that stay with you.

[MolleenCarie]

I've finished it half a dozen times.  I like it because it makes me reflect on society.  The Catcher in the Rye is way more depressing to me.  

[Word Nerd]

You should finish it. I've never read a more chilling last line.

[kitten18]

I read it in jr. High and then again a couple years ago. It really wasn't any better than I remembered. :P

[Cinder]

Yes, finish it. I read it in high school then again a couple years ago when ds1 had to read it for high school. We had a great discussion about whether the ending was literal or figurative.

[Joanne]

I just finished teaching it (for the second time). It is a provocative read, and I loved learning the cultural references to it.

 

It is not a heartening or "feel good" book but it is one that makes me think.

 

I admit to skimming (this time) The Book within the book. Propaganda used as fake/real propaganda was too much for me right now.

 

Big Brother's manipulation of primal instincts (sex, security, parenting, intimacy) was fascinating.

 

Here is a copy of my Facebook post on it earlier this month:

 

There are some books that you should simply NOT read during certain times in life. I just finished 1984 for the 3rd time. The first was IN 1984 when I was an idealistic and smart (ok, know it all) 18 year old who was going to save the world from itself. The second was 3 years ago when I facilitated dual credit to an awesome group of seniors. This time, finished tonight over Denny's coffee (so youngest could have wifi for his geography study guide). It was depressing beyond belief. I want to believe Winston returned to gin-stupor (at a worse level) because the will to live with passion had not been completely eradicated and it was the only way to keep the passion quelled. I think, ultimately, I do not like dystopia as a genre. I think I shall deteriorate to Harlequin. Or at least 50 Shades of Gray.

 

[Happy]

You should finish it. I've never read a more chilling last line.

 

yes, this.

 

Finish it. You'll never forget it and you'll only reread it if you want to....

 

[SailorMom]

I've finished it at least 5 times.  I do like dystopian novels, but this one takes the cake, absolutely.  The ending is a HUGE part of the entire theme of the book.

[The Governess]

Yep. Finish it. It is disturbing, but that is the point. It's one of those books that wasn't an enjoyable read for me, I'm not sure I could say I "liked" it even, but the message is so big and so important that I'm glad I read it. I've even read it multiple times.

[Wheres Toto]

This thread has made me want to re-read it.  I haven't been able to find the ebook less than $9. for Nook or Kindle.  Surprising.

[saraha]

I just read it this spring for the first time, and only because my son wanted to read it to compare it to the book The Napoleon of Knotting Hill, which I also read.  I finally gave up during all of the torture and skipped to the last page.   I don't regret that.

[topquark]

Finish it. Then Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, and Brave New World. They are so commonly quoted and referenced (with good reason!) that you should have, at least, a passing familiarity with their themes.

[unfrumpable.]

I pull it out and read it every now and then. The movie is even more of a downer than the book.

[LostSurprise]

Don't ever feel that you have to finish a book.  

 

Sometimes our lives are not conducive to a novel. Only we know for sure when to push on or stop. There have been times I've been thankful that I pushed through and many times I wished I'd stopped. 

 

 

[jenn&charles]

I never read it...but have it on my "get to one of these days list". After reading the replies to your post, I think I might take a stab at it this summer.

[JuanitaL]

I ditched it earlier this year. Now I'm thinking I should pull it back out and finish it. I'm a WTM lemming.

[jhschool]

Don't finish it.

It traumatized me as a young teen.

 

Go read something fun, like Jane Austen!

 

Or watch a fun movie, like Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.

 

I hated 1984.

 

 

[eternalsummer]

Here's the thing, I hated that book for a long time.  

 

Spoiler:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the end, he makes a mistake.  I took him too seriously for a long time; the image of the boot grinding down on humanity forever really depressed me.  But that is an incorrect analysis; *nothing* lasts forever.  Orwell was wrong about this.  Never in the history of anything, especially anything human, has a civilization or organization or situation lasted forever.

 

So then I released it, and it was good. :)

 

 

Doublespeak is an important concept, I think - maybe the best thing to come out of that book.

[lmrich]

I also read it in 1984. But if it is not for you, let it go. Move on to something else you would like more.

[Catwoman]

Ditch it if you're not enjoying it, and choose something you'd prefer to read.

 

There's no law that says you have to finish a book just because you started it. :)

[regentrude]

Read it in 1984 as a teen. It was banned in my country, which of course gave everybody even more of an incentive to get their hands on an illegal copy and read it.

It is pretty disturbing, and we found it captured the essence of the  society in which we grew up very well.

[Tohru]

Don't ever feel that you have to finish a book.  

 

Sometimes our lives are not conducive to a novel. Only we know for sure when to push on or stop. There have been times I've been thankful that I pushed through and many times I wished I'd stopped. 

 

This, exactly.

 

Yes, it's a great book and a classic, but why push through when there are much better things you could be doing with your time right now?  I've read it a few times and I honestly don't think it's a book for everyone. 

 

You can always pick it up again when you're in the mindset.

[Hen]

I finished it, and would have thrown the book across the room, except it was a library book.  I don't throw books, I don't miss-handle books, that is how much I hated it. I had a tiny silver of hope that the ending would turn out hopeful, somehow, since it is so well-praised. 

 

it's currently in the #1 spot of books I hate.

[Ausmumof3]

Love-hate the book. There are definitely valuable things in it. Anenemones analysis is good. That was what happened to me after I finished it.

 

I find the telescreen thing interesting. Now we all have iPhones etc that are capable of gathering huge amounts of information. No one forces us to have them, they are just way toooo useful.

 

I do like animal farm though.

[Eagle]

Now I want to read it again...

[eternalsummer]

My husband says my analysis was incomplete; he is right :)  I'll try to summarize:

 

Orwell was an anarchist, right?  (Homage to Catalonia was his best book, imo).  He saw government/capitalism as the thing that was messing everything up and making people miserable, and I think that to some degree he didn't separate democratic government from socialist government, as he saw that even socialism (especially the communists who fought in Spain with him and the anarchists) was a failure; power, at that point in history, seemed to turn into totalitarianism no matter what form it took.

 

So from his point of view, the boot does crush down on the human face forever - anarchism didn't work, and never can, because humans organize naturally into hierarchical societies of one form or another and there are always some with more power and some with less power.  The drive to do this is deep; apes do it, wolves do it, etc.  It could not, in the end, be overridden.

 

So for Orwell, who could see no good in some forms of government, it is something that will never change.

 

He wasn't wrong about the unchanging nature of human society - he was just wrong that it is always, on balance, a bad thing.

 

I think that government/order is, on balance, a good thing (though of course sometimes it can turn bad).  But I can see how his idealism was frustrated, and how disappointed and disillusioned he must have been that it seemed like the world was destined to repeat the World War ad infinitum.

[OhanaBee]

I read it first in 1984 [my English teacher had a sense of irony].  I wish I had read it knowing more about the world Orwell was living in at the time he wrote it, but in 9th grade English it was strictly a literature book. 

 

I've read it a few more time since then, with the full history behind it, and now see it more as social commentary.  And I really *do* like it......in a "gee, I want to be depressed so let's read the most depressing book on the planet...." kinda way.  But I like "Animal Farm" too, so that tells you what kind of person I am. ;)

 

However, if you don't like it, then don't feel you *have* to finish it.  Life is too short to read books we don't like just because we feel we have to read the entire thing.  I read one famous Lit book [which shall go unnamed because so many people LOVE this book] and hated, hated, hated it.  And when I got to the end I hated myself for wasting so much time on a book I hated.

 

[creekland]

I'm another who read the book in 1984 - and "enjoyed" it solely due to the title matching the year.  I wonder how many more readers there were that year than any year around it... but that's a rabbit trail.

 

To be honest, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Diary of Anne Frank, Flowers for Algernon (both the short story and the book), and the Grapes of Wrath are the only required reading books I enjoyed back in my school days.  All the rest I thought were only popular due to English teachers liking them...

 

Do realize I'm very much a science/math person so YMMV.  I also appreciate more "English type" books now that I'm older than I did in my youth, but still, my reading interests tend to lie elsewhere.

 

But I do finish books once I start them.  I can't recall any I didn't.

[freeindeed]

I suggest that you finish it. I read it once and I was an adult when I did. I read it at the same time as my oldest child when he was in high school. We had great discussions. It is a book that stuck with me for a while. I was so angry and depressed by the way it ended, but I think it *had* to end that way.

[flyingiguana]

If you really don't want to finish it, but you feel you should "get the message", so to speak, then head on over to spaknotes and read *about* it instead.

 

I sometimes do that with books I'm not liking.

 

Sometimes it convinces me to skim ahead and read the end.  Sometimes I'm fine not finishing it.

 

But I don't think the point of 1984 was to *like* the book.  It's more a matter of whether you're getting anything out of it.  Is it giving you a point of view you hadn't thought of before?  Would reading the historical context of the novel be helpful?

 

Usually, when I can't read a book anymore, it's because I'm bored.  Because I already know everything in the book and can predict exactly what will happen and how it will be said.  As 1984 has been in print for a long time, you might already "know" the book without actually reading it.  (I didn't find this to be completely the case with me and 1984, but it was close)

 

Sometimes, though, I just..... can't.  This often happens to me when I find I'm reading a book about torture or Nazi concentration camps or something along those lines.  They're just too upsetting for me.  1984 didn't bother me as much in this respect, because it was fiction.  But even fiction about the Nazis is too much for me.  (Mostly, though, I don't even start those books)

 

I did make my kids finish 1984, even if they only skimmed through it.  It does drag a bit in the middle, but it might be important to read the end.

[J-rap]

Never read it.  But, I will say that about five years ago I finally got the courage to not finish a book if I didn't feel like it.  :)

[jenn&charles]

I never read it...but have it on my "get to one of these days list". After reading the replies to your post, I think I might take a stab at it this summer.

 

Ok, I just finished it and I think it's a big steaming pile....

 

All the same, I'm glad I read through it once but I won't ever be picking it up again!

 

Now I'm in need of something to cleanse my reading palate. ;-)