1984 by george orwell

i have officially finished my first book of 2009. (to be perfectly honest, i started reading in in 2008, but really, who's paying that much attention) so what to say about 1984 . . . i decided to read this book because i wanted to read something that had a long history of being banned. at first i picked "the handmaid's tale" by margaret atwood, but i was going to be reading the book with someone else, and i was told that "the handmaid's tale" has a lot of swearing, so we decided to read 1984 instead. i read "animal farm" in high school and i vehemently hated it, so i was a little leery of reading anything else by george orwell, but i enjoyed the first half of the book. i thought it was engaging, and i had respect the main character. about 3/4 of the way through, it took quite a turn and mr. orwell lost me. the entire tone of the novel changed. instead of inspiring it became depressing. i don't know that it would be appropriate to say that i liked the book . . . or that i disliked it. i am very glad i read it. it did make me contemplate on some of the ideas he presented in the beginning . . . but i'm not entirely sure i would recommend it to anyone.