One book. One week. One foot in the grave.

This week, approximately 10,000 years after everyone else in my age group, I read 1984. I've always known this book was a seminal piece in every student's high school english career, but it's somehow escaped me all these years until now. I entered the reading with some vague knowledge of the content: I'd heard the phrases big brother, memory hole, and orwellian used many times in popular culture. Besides this, I knew the story took place in the alternate reality of hyper-surveillance state in the year 1984 (dare I say, "duh"). Let me start by saying I really enjoyed this book: I read it voraciously (or as voraciously as I could as a student with a busy schedule) and finished in just a few days. I was continually drawn in by the multiple mechanisms of citizen surveillance Orwell presents in Oceania. Every time a new mode of surveillance was presented, I became both more fascinated and appalled. I realized how little room the public had to breathe, and how fr