1984 – George Orwell

The mother of all dystopian novels. The ministries, doublethink, revolution, the party, Big Brother, spies, mice, interrogations, Victory Gin – it’s all so terrifying. And yet, to me, it’s all a bit much (probably that's because, for my Ph.D., I spent 3 years looking at the nature of totalitariansim). I wonder whether Orwell actually believed all this (or part of it) would have happened.

I am glad I’ve read this book, but I can’t say that I liked it and I actually don’t have any particularly insightful comment to add other than: it’s all just a bit too much. 

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

I wonder whether, when he wrote this, Bradbury had actually predicted how little the world would have come to care about books by the start of the 21^st century. This dystopian novel was written at a time when the market wasn’t yet saturated with dystopian novels, and the idea of re-thinking the role of the firemen is undeniably a stroke of genius.

Having seen Truffaut’s movie before reading the book, I would have expected it to have a much more rigid structure and style. I also expected it to be dated, but I was wrong. Lastly, I also wasn’t expecting the book to scare me, but the mechanical dog is one of the most frightening creations I’ve ever come across.

Fahrenheit 451 remains a seminal book in the literature of the 20^th century. I am just afraid that in the near future we won’t need firemen to dispose of our books, we’ll happily throw them away ourselves.

Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak

Zhivago’s wife, Tonya, might be the most interesting character in this lengthy novel. Too bad she is barely present. What is the difference between this masterwork of 20^th century literature and Rosamund Pilcher’s books? As far as I know, the only ones are that Pasternak’s book is set in Soviet Russia and that it criticizes the Soviet system. This is praiseworthy, surely, but is it enough to justify the book’s popularity? I’m not quite sure, although it definitely should be enough to justify the view of Pasternak as a hero of the fight against totalitarianism.

I simply didn’t need those many pages of Zhivago’s pointless principles. An autobiography of Pasternak would have been a lot more interesting...