Doing My Summer Reading 10 Years Later

I don't remember when in my senior year 1984 was assigned to be read. Was it summer reading? Did we have to read it for class, but never actually talk about it? No idea, because I didn't read it... I was in AP Lit my senior year of high school and I absolutely did not want to read 1984. Mostly because I had read Animal Farm in my sophomore AP World History class and decided then that I hated George Orwell and nothing he wrote was going to be interesting to me. (By the way, I am pretty sure it was summer reading and I somehow managed to pass that assignment because I loved The Things They Carried. And I had really great friends who told me about the book so I could fake it til I made it.)

Well... Here we are 10 years later (almost exactly 10 years later, gross) and I have just downloaded 1984 on my kindle. I put it on my list of 25 books I had to read this year. I've been thinking about this damn book for like six years and I wanted to challenge myself to actually complete it. I never got past the first chapter (probably not even page 3) and as someone who will possibly need to teach it one day, I should probably finish the book. It's easy to "fake it til you make it" when you're working for a grade, it's not so easy to teach kids to read deeper into the meaning of the text if you yourself have never opened the book. This isn't Shakespeare, we can't figure it out as we go. 

But click "Read More" to find out how this all ends.

But this time around I feel different. I am starting my eleventh book of the year (2020, not school year) and I have worked my way up to this book in particular -- seriously, I made a list of books that I would read in a specific order (okay, it got messed up because I had to wait for some of the earlier books from the library). Anyway, I feel different. First of all, I want to read this one. Wanting and being forced to read something are two different ballgames... What made me want to teach English where I have to tell kids what to read? I also felt called to this book. It has been sitting on my shelf for 10 years untouched and lonely just waiting for me to pick it up again. Well, Mr. Paperback, you're gonna have to wait a little longer because I have a reading streak to beat on my kindle. And it's easier to read in the dark at 1:30 AM when you have a book on your kindle. Trust me, I love a good, old, musty smelling book just as much as the next lady (maybe a little more), but I live in a world where everything needs to be convenient and eBooks are convenient.

So for now I will start 1984 and then update the world when I finish it in six months. Lololol jk jk jk... No seriously, I hope it doesn't take me that long to read it. Hopefully I'll have a change of heart and not think it's awful (I know, how can I think that? I didn't even read it, blah blah blah). Hopefully I come out of this with a new appreciation for this piece of literature that so many people love.

Okay, I wrote all of that up there a few days ago without posting because I'm a lazy b*, but I have started reading the book.  I'm only starting chapter four after three days of reading (it's only 30 pages, i'm actually struggling here), but honestly it's very intriguing.  I still hate politics but I think I understand this book better this time around because I understand politics more this time around.  Man 17 year old me was really uneducated (she said ironically).  My personal growth was important for my ability to conquer this book. It shouldn't be a challenge and I want to try and get through it in a week, but I am going to enjoy the ride as I go. I'm committed to the book now - Winston has talked about murdering a girl after or while hooking up with her and honestly that's what got me to get past page five. 

I'm pretty sure the brown hair girl with the red sash, Winston, and O'Brien all die at the end, but I could be wrong.  I mean, what do I really know? ​

UPDATE 5/5/2020:
I finished on May 5. Technically May 6, but it was barely 1 am. So it didnt take me too long to finish, but it was longer than I wanted to spend on a book. I definitely spent 3 days reading 5 pages at one point because it was "the book" about the revolution or whatever and I was bored out of my mind... much like I was 10 years ago.

So let me backtrack to when I started reading it. A few days after I cracked open the (e)book, I had a dream of the ending that everyone lives and there are no true consequences of their actions. I woke up very annoyed thinking I finished the book and no one died. The disappointment then sat in the fact that I had not finished the book in my sleep. However, the annoyance that no one died became very real and I expressed that feeling aloud to my dad. I already have trust issues with Orwell and expect a dead main character when I mark the book as read on goodreads. My dad couldnt remember the ending but also wouldnt ruin it for me. (After telling him my thoughts and feelings of how the book ended his actual response was "I knew no one died, but I wasn't going to tell you that." I'm going to stop talking to him about books I know he's read until I have finished them.)

As I got to the last 25 pages of reading, the annoyances from that morning after my dream continued to grow. The way i saw it going, no one was going to die and I was frustrated but needed to finish (I didnt neglect my summer reading for 10 years just to give up in the final stretch). I can tell you that I was not as disappointed as I thought I would be at the end and there were a couple surprises (sorry, nothing involving rats will ever be fun to read), but I certainly was not satisfied with the end.

There were no consequences. None. Sure the government broke down the characters and let them live their INCREDIBLY unhappy lives, but They still have to remember the awful things they said about each other for the rest of their lives. I have spent time thinking about this ending and I just can't let it go.  It was not satisfying because now I have questions about earlier people they talked about in the books dying. Did they die? Or did they get to live their awful lives but got relocated and no one saw them again? (Actually, that's not a question, I'm sure they're dead.)

I get it, it's a metaphor and you have to read deeper into what the last two paragraphs are saying but I did not like it. I can admit that I appreciate the novel a lot more as a 27 year old adult than I did at 17. I had a much larger understanding of what was happening and why and could apply the ideas being expressed to the world we live in now. It's fascinating but I could have gone without the entire chapter within a chapter deal because it took me a week to read 10 pages. And if I'm being honest, while Winston was reading "the book" aloud, I felt like it was very obvious that they got caught in that moment - though the "who caught them" was a surprise.

I am still not an Orwell fan. I hope I don't have to teach this or Animal Farm when I get my next classroom but at least I will be more prepared than I would have been if I never went back to do my homework.