The Road to Wigan Pier

I'm a fan of dystopian novels so I decided to give Orwell's nonfiction work a shot. I was pleasantly surprised with his commentary on the state of the English working class and socialism in the 1930s. The description of the work day and home life of the working class was quite interesting and eye opening, as was Orwell's commentary on the ills of society.

Some of the book was geared toward English society and more applicable to a nation with a long history and more definitive class structure. Other statements still applied to current U.S. society, including some of his foreboding predictions (like eating unhealthy foods becoming the new fatal disease). I was fascinated with his foresight yet appalled at the same time that someone noticed this 70 years ago yet nothing was to head off or solve the problems.

The narrator had a great accent and made the book come alive. Thoroughly enjoyed the book and the narrator. I will look for more books read by this narrator.

A fantastic book (particularly if you are interested in the history of political debates on the left). Well narrated. This is what it says it is. I loved it.

Written in the mid '30s Orwell interprets and then comments on the mindset of England at the pivotal point of their metamorphosis into a partner of the European family from a bully leadership role. As ever, Orwell's insight is stunning

not Frederick Davidson

Don't know.

The narrator's voice was almost farcically sneering and comically upper-crust. But it wasn't meant to be a satire.

I have no idea.

This book is an interesting and detailed insight into the life of the working class in England in the 1930s, as well as into the thinking life of the intellectual socialists of that time. Mind you, most of the predictions Orwell made about the bleakness of the future of industrialization, and the inevitablility of socialism's adoption were way off-target, but then he didn't have the historical record of socialism's abject economic failures to draw upon as we do today, since it was almost all in the future at that time.

Nevertheless the way he analyzes from every angle, the thinking of socialists and non-socialists alike, is fascinating. What an intelligent man he was (I know, I know, if he was so intelligent, why did he get the future and the workability of socialism as an economic model so wrong? But I already addressed that in the last paragraph). Also, the details he describes in the everyday are a testimony to his incredible way with words.

The narrator's snobbish-sounding upper-class British dialect adds a lot to the reading, capturing the spirit of condescencion that Orwell clearly had for all sorts of groups he describes, whether socialists or non-socialists.

A first-class listen. I almost couldn't put it down.

I guess it might be a good book, but I just couldn't (although I tried) get past the narrator's infuriatingly smug tone...