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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 25, 2024 11:15:39 GMT
Animal Farm (1945)
Goddamnit, right up to the last paragraph I was still hoping for a Hollywood ending and the animals to come to their senses and overthrow the pigs. FFS.
120 wee pages, damn, it could've done with an 800 page version. Bit more character development of Boxer and the lads.
10/10.
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 25, 2024 11:29:11 GMT
1984 (1949).
Fuck knows why it took me so long to get to this. Written in 1949 ffs.
The language, oh God, it's just some sumptuous dystopia.
I'm guessing they made a movie of this within femtoseconds of the motherfucking book coming out...
...60 pages later and it seems palpably malsuited to being made into a film. The entire story happens inside Winston's head. He can't say any of his thoughts aloud. He can't even give a nod and a wink to anyone. Silent blank faces do not a movie make. Maybe they could have the dreaded narrator voiceover running right the fuck through the thing, start to finish.
Plus it is bleak as shiiiiiiiiiit. Halfway thru and after the miserable ending to Animal Farm I'm guessing Georgie Orwell ain't gonna pencil in The Rock breaking free of the shackles of Big Brother. Would hazard a guess Arnie and Sly as Winston And Syme ain't gonna be required.
Learnt from past experience with his novels that ol' Georgie boy DOES NOT do seppo-style happy endings. There aint gonna be some matinee idol swooping in to get the chick and save the day. There's going to be classic pommy bleakness and bad shit happening to everyone in the book then things will get worse and fucking worse then the book will end.
Still, at least Winston didn't get the bullet. Gets to sit out his days at his cafe, a broken man getting sozzled on pure ethanol I mean "gin".
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 28, 2024 1:16:20 GMT
The Clergyman's Daughter (1934)
9/10
I read this cunt in 1 day.
1 day mind you!
What a monumental literary achievement by me. Sure the wee fucker was only 90 pages long but still. A legendary effort by me.
Written 15 years before 1984 and you can see Georgie boy is tuning up the bleak "society is fucked and humans are shit" rhetoric.
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 28, 2024 1:24:30 GMT
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
The unrelenting cynicism and miserly poverty of Georgie O's setting here might be too much for most merry fucks but for a bleak cunt like myself it was perfectly in my wheelhouse.
10/10
1936 and it's all half a bob and ha'penny shillings squid and me not knowing wft thats all about but still, Jorge's writing style is so perfectly economical and evocative I was gripped to shit by this book. Mofo should really get more credit as a novelist. Fuck knows why he doesnt. Or does he? Seems like "1984, oh yeah, they teach that in schools don't they?" but that's it as far as his novels go in popular culture?.
And - holy shit - George O actually Spoiler... wheeled out a happy ending! FFS after his other efforts just tapered off into nihilistic gloom I was fully braced for much of the same. But no! Georgie O, you cheerful fucker!
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Oct 28, 2024 1:53:30 GMT
Coming Up for Air (1939)
9/10
It reads like basically an autobiography of what seems to be Georgie's life up till publication date of 1939. Shit reads like it was taken verbatim from his childhood.
Being the stable genius I am, I guessed right that this novel was written just before he wrote Animal Farm and 1984.
1939 and war is in the air for pommie gits. Towards the end of book Georgie starts getting bleak as shit visa visor the shitness of humanity etc and it just sounds like he's sowing the seeds for the ideas for 1984, the brilliant cunt.
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Post by jethro on Nov 2, 2024 1:50:29 GMT
Have you read Down and Out in Paris and London, gov'ner? His punk rock, auto-bio joint. He describes the squalor of the kitchens he worked in in fancy Paris restaurants and the tid bit I'll never forget is...Orwell says, he says...(and I'm paraphrasing here) the most important thing is to have sharp knives. The customers won't notice how bad the food is if you have very sharp knives. Brilliant and rings true.
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Nov 2, 2024 4:36:16 GMT
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