Animal Farm is Orwell’s classic satire of the Russian Revolution - an account of the bold struggle, initiated by the animals, that transforms Mr. Jones’s Manor Farm into Animal Farm.

Reviews

Jennifer

My heart and I chatted, and we agreed, this book was short. My heart thinks it was also stupid, and after spending some time talking to the wind, I came to agree with my heart.

Yet, after beginning the journey with this book and despite the words of my heart, something impelled me to continue. Surely it had something to teach me? The book had a lovely cover made of nicely textured stock that felt good in my hands. It offered the added efficiency of a fold-over flap–something that more publishers should make an effort to do, as it makes the use of a bookmark superfluous. But I suppose you need the collateral of winning the Guinness World Record for most translated book by a living author, and selling more than 65 million copies in more than 150 countries as one of the best-selling books in history,* to get that treatment.

• my heart cries

In my country, we have an expression: one should not judge a book by its cover. In this case, this is especially true. The prose turned out to be not nearly as nicely textured. That is irony. This book knows not of irony.

Still, though, I needed to complete my journey. My heart tugged on my sleeve.

As I continued my journey, I found that the text inside was set in a pleasing font. I could find no typos, which are always a portent of doom. So I kept going. I found the words that the font expressed were simple and easy to read. As I read them before falling to sleep each night, they neither challenged me nor troubled my dreams. Many people, I believe, enjoy this in a book, in the same way that they enjoy Hostess Twinkies. They are filled up with calories, which causes their bodies to believe that they have been fed a nutritious meal, when in fact their brains are lulled into sheep-like somnambulism. They grow fat and stupid(er) under the illusion that they have received nutrition without ever experiencing the pain of having to cook, and possibly work up a sweat or burn one’s fingers.

I wondered if this book was possibly dangerous. I wondered what kind of people would be deluded into thinking, within the guise of a poorly written but deviously well-conceived parable, that this book’s philosophy was, in fact, Deep and Meaningful Truth.

This book, I felt, was perhaps insidiously evil, a force with which I needed to do battle. I did not know which weapon to use, as irony appears to be rendered completely ineffective within a 3-metre radius of this book. Still, irony and a love of absurdity hovered around me as I searched for the true meaning in this book, and why it appears to offer a powerful message to so many.

I consulted the Oracle, known across all the lands by many names. She appeared to me in the form of Wikipedia, Queen of All The People’s Knowledge. Now, there’s an alchemist for you: Queen Wiki can turn knowledge into nonsense and then back again before your very eyes. The perfect Oracle for this book.

Queen Wiki turned out to be very entertaining and illuminating in this case. I learned that Joe Jonas and Russell Crowe loved this book. I glommed on to this as an omen that absurdity was lurking close. I interpreted it as a sign that I must continue. Again, I was struck by the irony of that, but turning back to the book, this fleeting insight that might have had a grain of real value was immediately squelched.

I sipped some sweet tea from a crystal goblet, and plodded on through the desert of thought that is this book.

This, I felt, was the lesson to be learned: in the Middle of the Centre of the Soul of the World, where blank-eyed acolytes are led (like sheep? hmmm) to unquestioningly accept and proclaim as truth the vacuous platitudes spouted by crystal-wearing, self-appointed mystics, psychics, tarot card readers, numerologists, motivational speakers and this author, irony is dead. Absurdity goes unrecognized. Skepticism is turned back at the gates by ill-formed philosophies based on the unwavering power of evangelical groupthink and our species' rather fascinating susceptibility to cognitive bias, or errors in thinking, that cause us to believe as truth that which can actually be scientifically validated as false.

This book makes a mockery of spirituality and the search for truth and meaning, under the guise of the easy, anxiety-quelling New Age philosophies that spoon-feed the stupid with Twitter-sized bites of nonsense. Beliefs like, “good things happen to good people.” “All is right in the end. If it’s not right, it’s not the end.” “God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle.”

To be shelved between this and this to gather dust and never to be read again. Do not trade or give away–you’ll just be spreading the bullshit.

My heart will go on.

Sitharaman

I need to start this review by stating 1) I can’t stand self-help books and 2) I’m a feminist (no, I don’t hate men- some men are quite awesome, but I am very conscious of women and our place in the world.)

Short summary (mild spoilers): A boy named Santiago follows his ‘Personal Legend’ in traveling from Spain to the Pyramids in Egypt searching for treasure. Along the way, he learns ‘the Language of the World’ the ‘Soul of the World’ and discovers that the ‘Soul of God’ is ‘his own soul.’

Bill Crown

A good parable–like “The Prodigal Son”–should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The problem with this little book is that it does precisely the opposite.

Coelho’s message–and, boy, is this a book with a message–is that each of us has his own Personal Legend, and that if we recognize that legend and pursue it sincerely, everything in the Universe (which is after all made up–wind, stone, trees–of the same stuff we are) will conspire to help us achieve it. Corollaries: 1) people who don’t recognize their legends are never happy, 2) people who fail to realize their legends are afraid, and 3) people who refuse to pursue their legends, even when they know what they are, are both unhappy and afraid. (I admit I’ve left out a nuance or two here and there, but not many. There aren’t more than three or four nuances in the book.)

I fear that the result of taking such a message seriously will be to make the successful even more self-satisfied, the narcissistic more self-absorbed, and the affluent more self-congratulatory. At the same time, those who are unfortunate will blame themselves for their bad fortune, those who lack self-esteem will lose what little they have, and the poor will see–no, not God, as the beatitude says, but–the poor will see they have only themselves to blame.

Perhaps I am being too harsh. I can see how a few individual young persons, hemmed in by parental expectations and seeking their own paths, may find enough hope and courage here to help them venture forth. But I am convinced the damage done by books like this–like The Secret, The Celestine Prophecy, and anything ever written by the late Dr. Wayne Dyer (or, for that matter, anything he may ever choose to channel from beyond the grave)–is far greater than the little good they may achieve.

If you like parables, don’t read this book. Go read a book of Hasidic tales collected by Martin Buber, a book of Sufi stories collected by Idries Shah, or a book of parables and sayings by Anthony de Mello instead.

Or then again, you could just try Jesus. Jesus is always good.

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