this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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I know it is a known Classic but i liked Animal Farm so much i had to share. Before reading i thought that it would be similar to 1984 or Brave new world which it kind of is but its also very very different. Right from the Beginning i was hooked. I really love Orwells Books but this one is my favourite. I did not expect that. So for anyone that did not yet read it, i highly recomend it! :)

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When I was a kid, my grandfather would record cartoon movies from TV to VHS and when we visited I'd watch those. One of them was an adaptation of Animal Farm. Of course I was way too young to understand any deeper implications of the work, but it did leave a deep impression on me. It is not suitable viewing for young kids.

As an adult I read the book and I really enjoyed it. I join OP in recommending it. It is also not a long book, so it's not a serious time investment if you don't happen to enjoy it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

One of the very few that I had to read at school but enjoyed anyway.

I noticed that a new book taking up the story of Manor Farm as a post-Brexit satire has been published just this week: Beasts of England. Obviously I don't expect it to be in the same league as Orwell, but I am actually intrigued to read this, and will get my hands on a copy soon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My favourite is Down and Out in Paris and London. Just and nice read.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This and Homage are his two best imo. His fiction is a little too on the nose and heavy handed.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Mate I got to be honest, it was published in 1945.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanx I'll try

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Great. I have already read 1984 so I will now give this a try.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Just as an FYI Orwell was kinda a horrible person. You can still enjoy his literature if you want but he couldn't help to find Hitler unlikable, was a colonial cop in India and didn't like how the Hindi people treated him because of it and and made lists of people who he accused of being leftists and Jewish.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

couldn’t help to find Hitler unlikable

I think you meant, to quote Orwell himself:

I should like to put it on record that I have never been able to dislike Hitler.

More on the list in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list

There is a notable and obvious overlap in Orwell’s notebook between many of 1940s London’s prominent gay, Jewish and anti-colonial public figures and the accused “cryptos.” Orwell’s bigoted commentaries fill his suspects notebook. Jews are clearly labeled (“Polish Jew,” “English Jew,” “Jewess”) whilst others were mislabeled (“Charlie Chaplin — Jewish?”). The African-American bass singer and future civil rights activist Paul Robeson finds himself in Orwell’s list with the note “very anti-white,” whilst the half-Jewish poet Stephen Spender is damned as a “sentimental sympathiser… tendency towards homosexuality.”

It'll always be funny that the dude who wrote something like 1984 was such an eager proto-McCarthyite snitch for the propaganda unit of the British Foreign Office.

[–] abrasiveteapot 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would have thought finding Hitler unlikeable would be a positive attribute ? Was that a typo ?

Orwell was a socialist so making lists of leftists seems surprising; are you sure this wasn't an ideological tankies vs socialists or marxists vs trotskyists ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Orwell paraded as a socialist which is why he knew who were true leftists and who weren't. Dude was a narc of the highest order, and a traitor to the cause any way you look at it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It was probably a typo.