Read it. Loved it. Even managed to wade through the whole 'Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein' essay. Orwell's books may not have been the most thrilling or ostentatiously written books ever, but dammit, the man knew how to make a point.
Yes, it's always been one of my favorite books and probably the most famous of the 'future totalitarian' genre. May I suggest One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.
I should think most people have read it, though maybe not at age 14. (well when I say "most people", I mean most people that read books at all.) You might be interested in a couple of novels that had a big influence on 1984: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and The Iron Heel by Jack London. "We" also depicts a future totalitarian society while The Iron Heel is London's vision of a future class war in the US.
1984 - by far one of the best books I've ever read. "We" by Zamyatin one of the worst. The plot is pretty simular in both these books but Orwell could pull it off so much better.
The book is great - so much better than the movie, although i dig Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" and its obvious Orwellian influence.
i was supposed to read it for english but read like one page and i could not get into it. i hated it.
I got it from the school library. It took me like 3 months to read because i got really bored and pretty much stopped readin when winston was readin from the Book but I finished it and overall it was a pretty groovy book. The ending wasn't what I expected but It was a pretty big warning about the future.
I didn't fine Anthem to particularly special, especially compared to 1984 and Rand's other books. I suppose it is good if you are looking to cover the genre.
Really great. From what I remember I read the most part of it on a flight to Lanzarote. It really spoke to me, I mean this book created concepts which don't seem much of a fantasy anymore. It scary, but not completely surprising to believe there may be a possibility our world ends up much like how the novel described it.
i mentioned this in a recent thread about Brave New World, but Kurt Vonnegut is another great author to check out. Slaughter House Five is one of my favorite books and breakfast of Champions is good too
It is so like an exaggerated look at many modern cultures with mindless sheep constantly droning the praises of their social establishments, creating enemies out of nothing to further their nationalistic agendas, biasing the "media" on anything it doesn't approve of and so forth. Why exactly does that bother you Odon? I mean do you really not see the somewhat subtle similarities or do you just do your best to ignore them? Ironically I first read it in 1984.