Animal Farm : George Orwell - The power of allegory

 

I started reading 'Animal Farm' due to its fame.

The book reminds me of Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) and his allegorical tactics and his attention to detail in describing the stories.

George Orwell (1903 - 1950) openly criticized Joseph Stalin (1878 - 1953) the then Political leader of the USSR (United of Soviet Socialist Republics), a socialist country and it impacted the publication of the book negatively. But it bought him into the spotlight in that period and made this book a dystopian allegorical masterpiece.

The book is a metaphorical depiction of the cruelty of political leaders in colonial countries.

Countries like where I live, (Sri Lanka) have a bad history after the independence from the British and it is very close to what is reflected in this book. The political leadership and the thought process of the people are like a blueprint of 'Animal Farm', which is quite disturbing. Hence the book becomes a timeless classic.

My three-star low rating is due to the political biases of George Orwell only to attack the USSR and not respect the commonality of the theme.

Brave New World Revisited : Aldous Huxley - A rare collection of thoughts about his own work published previously which was groundbreaking

 

I bought BNWR (Brave New World Revisited) (1958) and BNW (Brave New World) (1932) by Aldous Huxley as a vintage publication from Sarasavi Bookshops Online and Sarasavi Bookshops Gampaha branch. Both books have a unique cover design which is pretty awesome.

The novel BNW published in 1932 is far ahead in terms of predicting a fictionalized future rather than his collection of essays BNWR (1958) published after thirty years which have several predictions gone wrong due to political changes in the global setting compared to the 1950s to 2022.

The first chapter "Overpopulation" suggests that due to this issue of the rising population there will be an obvious bias toward communism of nations' policies and due to this there will be a negative impact on the United States of America (USA). But with the fall of the Soviet Union, many of the communist nations changed their policies to capitalism leading to the end of the cold war. It reflects that many of Huxley's arguments are political rather than being world view. Many of the issues like overpopulation are now tackled by concepts like sustainable development in economics.

Chapters like "Quantity, Quality, Morality" and "Over-organization" discusses very valuable and insightful facts. Many concepts are highly connected to the modern world today.

Aldous Huxley's knowledge and intelligence are unparalleled as it is depicted in his collection of essays related to BNWR. It emphasizes the thought process of the 1950s to 1960s and also analyses many foundations of knowledge he used in BNW.

For a bird's eye view of the novel following list of chapters will be put down for easy reference.

(01) Introduction

(02) Foreword

(03) Overpopulation

(04) Quantity, Quality, Morality

(05) Over-organization

(06) Propaganda in a democratic society

(07) Propaganda under a dictatorship

(08) The arts of selling

(09) Brainwashing

(10) Chemical persuasion

(11) Subconscious persuasion

(12) Hypnopaedia

(13) Education for freedom

(14) What can be done?

Serials of reviews / විචාර ලිපි මාලා

 (01) "නාරද" සහ "කොලට්" ද්විත්වය දකින ශ්‍රී ලංකාව 

 (02) Modern Sri Lankan Renaissance (2015 - 2020)

 (03) අතීතයට ගමනක්…. (Already listed)

 (04) නුතන ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ පුනරුදය (2015 - 2020)

 (05) "නලින් ද සිල්වා" කියවීම.

 (06) තුන්පත් රටා පොත් පෙළ : අංක 01 / 02 / 03 - සිංහලයේ සංස්කෘතියේ තුන් ඇදුතු පොත් පෙළේ පළමු / දෙවැනි හා තෙවැනි කොටස් 

 (07) රටක මහිම පොත් පෙළ - අංක 11 : ශ්‍රී පාදස්තනේ : ජේ. බී. දිසානායක 

 (08) සිත්තර මහිම පොත් පෙළ  

SPOTLIGHT

 (01) MJ

 (02) LP

 (03) G n R

 (04) BJ

 (05) HRJ

 (06) WDA

 (07) ACDC

 (08) CT Fer.

 (09) GD (Green Day)

 (10) B n S

 (11) IRAJ

 (12) FB

 (13) SF

 (14) Allright

 (15) Nilwala Label

 (16) Seeduwa Sakura

 (17) Nihal Nelson

 (18) Clarance Wijewardena

 (19) Anesly Malewana

 (20) Rony Leech (තට්ටයා)

 (21) Ginger 

 (22) Corriene Almeida

 (23) Marshall Mathers (EMINEM)

 (24) Hans Zimmer

 (25) John Williams

සිංහල පලනොවූ විචාර

(01) ඔබේ පවුලේ ඉතිහාසය ගැඹුරින් අවධානයට ලක් කිරීම.

(02) English translations 

(03) Revisiting a story of a shit-head vagabond 

(04) විඥානය යනු කුමක්ද ? [ බෞද්ධ පොත පත නැවත විවරණය ] 

English titles of some of the unpublished book reviews

 (01) Gihin Enna 'Carnival'

 (02) Narada and Collette's Sri Lanka

 (03) A humane prayer to the sea

 (04) A man, A woman, and two monks travel to India

Train your Brain - Terry Horne and Simon Wootton : An 360 perspective on brain training

 

'Train Your Brain' was a gift to me by one of my father's friend from Sampath Bank PLC who gave it to me in the year 2010.

I read the book in year 2022.

If it was 12 years ago and I would have benefited if this book was read earlier. But anyway due to my misfortune this abundant set of infomation which is very valuable increases my regret more but also helped to increase my knowledge atleast now.

The book deals with a lot of science of how the brain works and also manages to dissect the ways and patterns of thinking in order to gain competitive advantage over brain training. (E.g. - Critical thinking, verbal thinking, visual thinking)

Some of the good things of the book is summarised in point form.

(01) Drink a lot of water

(02) Dark Chocolate

(03) Use left hand to brush teeth and write

(04) Do constantly brain training

(05) Reduce phone, PC and television screen time

(06) Exercises

(07) Reading is good for your brain, but listening and having meaningful conversations is better.

Overall a better addition to motivational and brain training books which is on par to "Think and Grow Rich" (1937).