Fourth read. The appendix is the good news.

Fourth, first since 2013. I come back to this every few years. Only title on my list I dread slightly before starting.

What changed: I had remembered the torture as the centre of the book and it isn't. It's the last third. The first two thirds are almost entirely about tiredness. Bad razor blades, gin that tastes of nitric acid, a man too worn out to think straight for twenty minutes at a stretch. That's the part I now find frightening, and it wasn't the part that frightened me before.

Julia I have flipped on completely. I had her filed as a plot device with opinions about underwear. She is the only competent person in the book. Everything Winston does is sentimental and dangerous; everything she does is practical until he talks her out of it.

The appendix, though. It is written in the past tense. It describes Newspeak as something that was once attempted and did not take. I read this book three times before I noticed that, and I've never heard anyone raise it in a pub argument, which is where the bulk of my Orwell discussion happens.

Nine, because the Goldstein chapters are still a slog and I skimmed them again, for the fourth time, having sworn beforehand that I wouldn't.