# Orwell Readers: Your Favorites? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 10, 2006, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214 "2006-09-10T22:23:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![11811](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/9d8465/32.png) [@11811](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/11811)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/1 "2006-09-10T22:23:05Z")
Way back in 1983, I assiduously avoided being guilted into reading 1984, and contented myself with Burmese Days. Since then I have read 1984, and I’m currently making my way through “The Road to Wiggan Pier.” Aside from the dated references (especially 1930’s wages), I’m finding it a superbly tonic read, and it’s keeping alive my hunger to vote. What, besides Animal Farm and Down and Out in Europe, would you consider the essential Orwell? ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/2 "2006-09-10T22:48:45Z")
Homage to Catalonia, in which he describes his experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War and the infighting among leftist groups in Spain at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2006, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/3 "2006-09-10T22:53:19Z")
While I enjoy all three books mentioned, as well as _Down and Out in Paris and London_, I find myself reading Orwell’s [essays](http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays.htm) again and again. ---
**Author:** ![JacobSwan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@JacobSwan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JacobSwan)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2006, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/4 "2006-09-11T09:45:36Z")
Coming up for air is very good and usually ignored by people. Quite poignant. A clerygymans daughter is excellent especially if you read it as semi autobiographical. Mr Warburton is a great rogue. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2006, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/5 "2006-09-11T09:54:19Z")
I enjoyed Burmese Days. BTW, it’s Wigan, not Wiggan. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2006, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/6 "2006-09-11T09:55:20Z")
OK, I should probably read the OP properly next time :smack: ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2006, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/7 "2006-09-11T10:37:22Z")
I second Down and Out in Paris and London. And his essays, most particularly Politics and the English Language. Anyone who wants to consider writing anything should read it first. Most people don’t seem to have. And Shooting an Elephant. And his essay on the coming of spring in which he becomes almost lyrical, in a Orwell kind of way: "The bombs are piling up in the warehouses, the police are prowling the cities, but the Earth is still going around the sun, and as much as the dictators and beaurcrates disapprove of the process they are unable to prevent it. " ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2006, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/8 "2006-09-11T10:44:37Z")
Oh wait, I forgot Such, Such Were the Joys. Problem is so little of him doesn’t seem essential. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2006, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/9 "2006-09-11T10:56:09Z")
By the way, is _Down and Out in Paris and London_ meant to be fiction, nonfiction, or some mix of the two? I ask because one chapter (The Spike) is collected verbatim as one of his essays, and none of his other essays could be confused with fiction. I haven’t been able to read very many of his minor works (_i.e._, works other than _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ and _Animal Farm_) but I have read and very much enjoyed _Down and Out in Paris and London_. I also thoroughly enjoy all his essays. I wish his minor works were better known; the two works that are well-known paint him as relentlessly pessimistic and rather dour, something that is not reflected in his essays especially. Speaking of that, [here is a collection of fifty of his essays](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html), containing ones not in the site linked above. > [@betenoir](#): > > And his essays, most particularly Politics and the English Language. Anyone who wants to consider writing anything should read it first. Most people don’t seem to have. [Perhaps even Orwell should have](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003366.html): > [@](#): > > In the course of a tirade about the alleged evil and dishonesty of political writing, Orwell wrote (apparently without irony, Nunberg noted) that in the evasive kind of writing he disapproves of, “the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active”. Orwell formulated an edict (which he had just violated): “Never use the passive where you can use the active.” I don’t take nearly the dim view of the essay they do: They, in their zeal to debunk Orwell’s grammatical _faux pas_, completely miss the actual _point_ of his essay: > [@](#): > > When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—BESTIAL ATROCITIES, IRON HEEL, BLOODSTAINED TYRANNY, FREE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD, STAND SHOULDER TO SHOULDER—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2006, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/10 "2006-09-11T18:51:38Z")
My fave Orwell essays (based, mainly, on the amount of thought they provoked in me and the new things they taught me about Orwell’s times and places): [“Shooting an Elephant”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part4) [“Marrakech”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part8) [“Boys’ Weeklies”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part9) (Never even **heard** of Billy Bunter before I read this and the referenced stories are almost impossible to find in libraries – which does not detract from the impact of the essay.) [“Charles Dickens”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part10) [“Inside the Whale”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part12) (Never read _Tropic of Cancer_ either, but it doesn’t matter; all English majors should read this essay, with dissects all British literary trends of the '20s and '30s while evoking a zeitgeist that seriously feared the imminent destruction of Western Civilization by rising fascism.) [“The Art of Donald McGill”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part13) (Believe it or not, that innocuous postcard artist was later [prosecuted for obscenity.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McGill)) [“The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part14) (I learned more about British culture from this than from all the episodes of _Masterpiece Theater_ I ever watched.) [“Rudyard Kipling”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part17) [“Mark Twain: The Licensed Jester”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part18) [“Raffles and Miss Blandish”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part23) [“Politics and the English Language”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part42) [“Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travelks”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part43) [“Such, Such Were the Joys”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part43) ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2006, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/11 "2006-09-12T06:06:19Z")
Two more important Orwell essays: [Reflections on Gandhi](http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/ghandi.html) [Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool](http://www.george-orwell.org/Lear,_Tolstoy_and_the_Fool/0.html) ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2006, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/orwell-readers-your-favorites/372214/12 "2006-09-12T18:54:51Z")
[Notes on Nationalism](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part30) is fascinating. It also contains one of my all-time favorite lines: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”