Bionic Jean’s Comments (group member since Jun 04, 2021)

Bionic Jean’s comments from the George Orwell Matters! group.

They are all so different ObeisantBread84, and you won't find any similar to the final two which you have just read.

You could try Rosemarie's suggestion (which is nonfiction), or either of the group reads we have had: Coming up for Air which is a comic novel https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
or one of my favourites, Down and Out in Paris and London - journalism again - the comprehensive thread for our group read is https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
(Apologies, Goodreads decided that these two threads were "dangerous websites" and would not let me link tidily, even though they are actually within our group 😂)

Good idea Jennifer! I remember enjoying that one.

I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts too! Good to hear from you Edmond 😊.

In such essays, George Orwell always stressed the themes and approaches (and sometimes techniques) common to several systems, so it will be interesting to see if that is what he has done here. An example is his classic Politics and the English Language, which we had a good group read of LINK HERE.

Good luck with your studies!

Happy new Year to all our members!

Did you know that George Orwell was once convinced he saw a ghost?



(image: Mike Page)

Since he neither went to church nor believed in the paranormal, it seems doubly strange. But one summer’s evening in 1931 he was sitting in St Andrew’s Walberswick churchyard (East Anglia) at around 5.20pm, writing notes for The Clergyman's Daughter, and said:

“I was sitting at the spot marked*, looking out in the direction of the dotted arrow. I happened to glance over my shoulder, and saw a figure pass along the line of the other arrow, disappearing behind the masonry and presumably emerging into the churchyard,”



This comes from a letter to his friend Dennis Collings:

“I wasn’t looking directly at it and so couldn’t make out more than that it was a man’s figure, small and stooping, and dressed in lightish brown; I should have said a workman.

“I had the impression that it glanced towards me in passing, but I made out nothing of the features. At the moment of its passing I thought nothing, but a few seconds later it struck me that the figure had made no noise, and I followed it out into the churchyard. “There was no one in the churchyard, and no one within possible distance along the road—this was about 20 seconds after I had seen it; and in any case there were only two people in the road, and neither at all resembled the figure.”

There's more here https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/21322550....

It's depressing, indeed 🥹

That's the situation I'm in too, Petra.

Just popping in to say I'd also like to read Brave New World, (as long as it's next year! But if its organised before then, I'd just tag along later.)

Thanks Jennifer 😊

We can't add this individual essay to the group page as it is not published separately. I've just looked through 5 collections of George Orwell's essays, (Penguin, Oxford etc.) intending to put one on the home page for our current read with a note explaining the specific essay we are reading. However it's not in any of them! I was quite shocked at this 😲

Since Jennifer has give us the link, happily everyone is able to read the review, but sadly it won't appear on the home page.

Will it continue until the end of August, Jennifer? Perhaps you could add the dates to the first post please, and I've edited the home page in anticipation.

Here's the link, John: The Orwell Tour, Travels Through The Life And Work Of George Orwell by Oliver Lewis

It does sound good, thanks!

Sorry for the delay Jennifer ... I'm afraid I haven't a clue about "Billy Brown of London Town". Popular culture way before my time 😂

I'm so pleased you enjoyed it Petra! Presumably George Orwell liked it a lot - I'm wondering what he said as the reviews I've read by him are pretty critical. And the essay he wrote about reviewing LINK HERE to our discussion thread on Confessions of a Book Reviewer seemed to take a dim view of how book reviews of the time were expected to be (i.e. complimentary and often badly informed).

Thank you so much for your comments, Petra 😊

Great! The essay is in most collections, I think, as it's quite well-known as one of the ones which has lasted. Crossing my fingers for you ...

Yesterday was the official end date for this read. Please let us know here if you would like a little longer, before Jennifer moves to discussing George Orwell's review of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Petra, these are really interesting thoughts, thank you! I wonder if George Orwell will pick up on any of these ideas. Perhaps he was trying to "improve" on the work as he saw it?

He's one of my favourite authors 😊 In earlier incarnations like John Beynon or John Beynon Harris he wrote more run of the mill SciFi for magazines, but as John Wyndham I find his novels and shorts often include quite a bit of ethical philosophy, whilst being great stories!

Oh I have that one on kindle! It was one of the last group of books my brother bought me, but I've never read it for some reason. I'm so pleased to hear it is good, thanks Petra 😊

I remember a TV programme I once saw about Margaret Atwood, in which she said that al her dystopian ideas were fact. She said that every single scenario had happened in some place at some time, to some group of people, and that she never made any of them up from scratch!

Oh Laura - I must look at that then thanks!

Janelle - I too thought it was skewed to recent books, with quite a few missing from the 20th century.

In principle though, it might be nice to have a slot in the year for books of this type, bearing in mind George Orwell's influence ... Jennifer and I will have to have a conflab!😊Good to hear others' thoughts.

How many have you read? Are you keen to read more?

Oh yes, top of the tree (as he should be 😄). I've read half a dozen of these, and eyed a few others, but am sure many here will have read more! Nice list, thanks Jennifer.

Should we also be reading some of these as a group? What does anyone think?