“Come one, come all, into 1984…”

While I wait for my copies of Bend Sinister, Pnin, and Transparent Things to arrive in my mail in a week or two (I ordered a cluster to qualify for free shipping), I have started to read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I have heard of terms and ideas like “Big Brother”, “Thought Police”, overtly oppressive government, and other tidbits in contemporary use but originated from Nineteen Eighty-Four. I am aware that it is a seminal piece of work still garnering references to it to this day, so I decided to pick up the novel and have it under my belt to better understand its influence.
As one may have inferred through the small list of titles I have mentioned in this blog, I prefer to read the classics. When I have no specific composition of written discourse that I want or forced to read, I fall back on the greats, the renowned titles in the realm of literature. That’s not to say I never buy new books. When I have a desire to read a particular work, I will try to obtain it, regardless if it is new or not. But I don’t browse newly or recently released books when I am empty-handed. I let time distill the good from the mediocre, the exceptional from the good, and the greats from the exceptional. Reading the classics ensures my mind is consuming the best possible enrichment my time could buy.