[Steely Tom]

I generally don’t think that 99-percent of the population have ever read ‘1984’.

I read it, in sixth grade. I only skipped the romantic stuff in the middle. The forty or fifty pages at the beginning, and the forty or fifty pages at the end, I read, in horror and amazement and fear.

I remember it vividly because Buffalo Springfield's song For What It's Worth was on the radio at the time, and its message reinforced the queasy and sick feeling the book gave me.

I don't think any other fiction book ever affected me so much.

[central_va]

The DPRK is an implementation of Orwell’s 1984.

[Noumenon]

Read Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich while I was in 8th grade. Found it in the school library. It was a life-changing experience.

[Chickensoup]

Books I required my homeschooled high schoolers to read

in order:

Animal Farm (the perfect 7/8th grade intro
1984
Brave New World
The Earth Abides
The Long Walk

Today I would add : The Mandibles.

Concurrently I used the entire Uncle Eric series through out highschool to give them a broad view of economics and government. Taught along with traditional sources for those subjects.