Maggie and I have completed our first book in our new (and somewhat exclusive) book club. We read George Orwell's classic, Ninteen Eighty-Four.

We'd both been interested in the story of "Big Brother" and I'd already seen Equilibrium a few years back which covers a lot of the topics so it was a good first choice for us. I'm going to try and track down the two film adaptations for our viewing pleasure.

Having Maggie as an English teacher certainly helped us in our last meeting tonight as she'd prepared some discussion questions, similar to what she'd present her students.

Here are two of her questions, and my responses to them:

What do you think is the key theme Orwell was trying to convey?

Orwell's key theme for me was the inspection of what defines humanity and provides worth to a life. The removal or intra-human feelings, trust, free thought and free will leaves a world that's very harsh and undesirable.

For me, the biggest lesson I took away (other than the obvious problems a totalitarian government would impose) was that at somewhere you go past the point of no return. It's likely that you'll approach that point slowly yet steadily and as you pass it you'll not be overly concerned because you won't have identified it. It reminded me of the story about the frog in the hot water that Al Gore said with respect to global warming: if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water then he'll jump out; if you put him in a pot of cold water that you then raise to boiling point he'll be cooked.

How has reading 1984 changed the way you see the world?

I now understand a lot of cultural references better, especially from within the computing communities. Emmanuel Goldstein is the pseudonym of a New York radio host responsible for creating 2600. I've seen 2 + 2 = 5 on T-shirts; "Big Brother" is a popular reality-television show.

Politically the book reinforced some fears and reservations. The idea of a perpetual yet necessary war scared me about our current state of international affairs.

All in all I think this was a fine book to start with and I look forward to our next choice.