Finished: 1984 (Orwell). Oh my gosh. That was intense! It took me a little bit to get into it, but once Winston Smith started interacting with other people, then I could hardly put it down. I kept thinking somehow he or his mind or his heart would win out in the end. Poor Winston! The book within the book...that was fascinating. The insights on war, the social hierarchy, the cost people were willing to pay at the expense of fellow humans to be in power. The concept of doublethink..."the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." The people in power used doublethink this way: "If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a believe in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes." You have to admit mistakes to learn from them. But if you admit mistakes, you admit infallibitily. So with doublethink, you just believe both things, but separately...never thinking how they contradict each other. Oh my gosh, pages and pages of ideas like that. Of course...1984 came and went without us being thrown into an oligarchic society. Or, maybe I'm a "prole" and I just don't realize it. :-)