A book well worth reading. Still timely and relevant after almost 100 years. Unlike 1984, this one makes its point in a more understated way: poverty isn’t a moral failing. I feel like we’re (I’m talking about our culture here in the west) still afflicted with this idea that people find themselves in poverty because of some moral failing, such as, laziness or… I think it comes down to that. The flip side of this, of course, is that we tend to equate wealth with virtue. We’re all walking around with this unspoken notion that we’re all getting our just deserts. Even though, really, it comes down to what kind of parental lottery you happened to win. How else to explain people who inherit squillions of dollars and then feel like it’s all due to the sweat of their brow or their uncanny ingenuity. Orwell works real hard to puncture that balloon by showing the humanity and variety of human beings stuck in the poverty trap.