Sometimes I hate computers.  I had written a lovely post… and then I press a button and it all disappears in a second!

But I’ll try to rewrite my post.

1984 is a fascinating book.  In fact, Orwell himself was a fascinating author.  I was made to read Animal Farm back in school, and like many required books, I hated it.  And was strangely fascinated with it.

Orwell had a gift for writing books that made you uncomfortable.  His style was to bring to the forefront, aspects of the human race that we are not really comfortable with facing.  Both 1984 and Animal Farm were to me both repugnant and compelling.  I didn’t like what he was saying about the human race, but I could not say that I really disagreed with his observations on human nature.

DH and I are a third of the way into the book.  And now, my libertarian leaning husband is paranoid (actually he prefers to call himself a democratic republican after the great man Thomas Jefferson himself).  He already wanted to shoot the cameras on the traffic lights, and he was convinced that every sheriff’s deputy/policeman was after him.  Who can blame him, I was there a few times when they followed him, but I digress.  Now, he is perfectly convinced that Big Brother exists, and is currently known as the government.

As for myself, my fascination for the books stems from the words and phrases Orwell coined, that have made their way into the national lexicon of at least two countries, if not more (Great Britain and the United States just in case you wondered).

It was in the book 1984 that the term Big brother was coined, and now I am seeing it in use everywhere.

I watched Numbers on Friday (I love to laugh at this show)… there was Big Brother mentioned.

I read a blog yesterday… totally unrelated to my reading, and there was the term newspeak.

I have to wonder, how many people have actually read 1984?  And how many use the terminology - without even realizing where it came from?

The truth is, I have been thoroughly enjoying ‘reading’ the book with my husband.  We discuss the chapters we have read/heard, and apply it to the things we see now.

We discussed how the book influenced the ‘B-movie’ They Live (fascinating film), and how recent technological advancements reflect the things Orwell foresaw.

The discussion lead into a diatribe on ‘how modern schools were leaning towards Newspeak’ and ‘how the history books are rewritten’ à la Big Brother.  I am sure there are other similarities out there… we'll just have to keep reading to find out.

I have plans for the future though... and they include going back to Atlas Shrugged and reading it together...