Review: Essays by George Orwell

Essays (Penguin Modern Classics) - George Orwell

This review is going to be different than the other ones. That's because they are all (short) essays, so it would be difficult to summarize review all 41.

 

I haven't read all of those 41 essays, because most of them are spoilers for books/authors I haven't read yet (such as the essays Charles Dickens and Politics vs Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels) or they are about topics I don't know nothing about and I'm going to learn about them at school in the next few years, so I want to read those essays when the time has come.

 

My favorites (of which I've read obviously) are ''Why I Write'', ''Shooting an Elephant'', ''Bookshop Memories'', Marrakech'', ''The Art of Donald McGill'', ''Books v. Cigarettes'' and ''Confessions of a Book Reviewer'' so if you want to start with his essays: read those 7! Here are all the essays I've read with there rating:

 

1. Why I Write 5/5 ★
2. The Spike 2/5 ★
3. A Hanging 3/5 ★
4. Shooting an Elephant 5/5 ★
5. Bookshop Memories 5/5 ★
6. Marrakech 5/5 ★
8. Boys' Weeklies 2/5 ★
10. My Country Right or Left 3/5 ★
11. The Lion and the Unicorn 3/5 ★
12. Wells, Hitler and the World State 4/5 ★
13. The Art of Donald McGill 5/5 ★
16. W. B. Yeats 3/5 ★
17. Poetry and the Microphone 5/5 ★
18. In Defense on English Cooking 4/5 ★
22. Antisemitism in Britain 5/5 ★
24. Notes on Nationalism 4/5 ★
25. Good Bad Books 3/5 ★
27. Nonsense Poetry 2/5 ★
28. The Prevention of Literature 4/5 ★
29. Books v. Cigarettes 5/5 ★
34. Confessions of a Book Reviewer 5/5 ★
36. How the Poor Die 3/5 ★
39. Such, Such Were the Joys 4/5 ★
40. Writers and Leviathan 4/5 ★

I really like most of his essays and I highley recommend this bindup. This bindup has ALL of his essays and other collections have the most known ones or just one. Most of his essays are about politics, but some of them are about writing and culture (and obviously I love those ones a little bit more)

 

Are you going to read George Orwell's essays or have you read them and if so: which one is your favorite?