[pepsionice]

I generally don’t think that 99-percent of the population have ever read ‘1984’. Even when some college professor requires it for a class to be read....most will pick up the Cliff-Notes, the Spark-Notes, or pick up a Classic-Comics cartoon book on the story.

[TigerClaws]

Leftists certainly have misread it if they did:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/orwells-1984-and-trumps-america

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/31/opinions/why-we-read-1984-urbelis-opinion/index.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/01/1984-george-orwell-alternative-facts-trump-kellyanne-conway/514259/

[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.

[xp38]

I have read it on my own and not part of a course but quite a while ago now. It’s not a happy book. The most frightening part (spoiler alert) is the ending where the state embodied by Big Brother wins. Any normal person would get the message but of course H is a very warped person. I haven’t read Animal Farm but I should get around to it. It’s a shorter read I think.

[Chickensoup]

for those what have not read it the movie is an accurate rendering. Worth it.