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eftsh's review against another edition
1.0
3 good sentences, 1 good short story.
Not so sharp but boooooring. (Hop-picking Diary leveled it up a little)
Not so sharp but boooooring. (Hop-picking Diary leveled it up a little)
littlepanda's review against another edition
4.0
Continuing in the Greatest ideas, The Decline of the English Murder.
I have to admit i picked it up mainly for its title (and because I love Orwell). I did enjoy it but a bit less than Books vs Cigarettes.
The essays that I liked most was "Hop-Picking Diary" and "Good Bad Books". What I really enjoy in those essay, besides the themes, it's Orwell's styles. It's non fiction but not the heavy kind that you have to stop to read after 10 minutes because you have a headache. it's really fluent and even funny at some point.
I have to admit i picked it up mainly for its title (and because I love Orwell). I did enjoy it but a bit less than Books vs Cigarettes.
The essays that I liked most was "Hop-Picking Diary" and "Good Bad Books". What I really enjoy in those essay, besides the themes, it's Orwell's styles. It's non fiction but not the heavy kind that you have to stop to read after 10 minutes because you have a headache. it's really fluent and even funny at some point.
mcyewfly's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
Orwell presents a true master class in essay writing. I want to show every student his 40 page manifesto on Dickens; you can be an absolute scathing hater and be brilliantly articulate. Orwell would have been an overlooked but constantly screenshotted Twitter user. He would have been loved being a niche-micro internet celebrity.
kate_in_a_book's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
I love Orwell's writing overall and for the most part he is fiercely humanist, but there are definitely some, ahem, outdated attitudes in here about women, mental health and people who are gay, Jewish, Romany or Black.
jayanktyagi's review
4.0
A great “essay” on the account of a hanging, does a great job in showing the racism, cruelty and heartlessness of the British empire.
softstarrynights's review against another edition
2.0
Decline of the English Murder is a short collection of eight essays by George Orwell. The design of this book, as part of the Penguin Great Ideas series, is gorgeous as it mimics a newspaper down to the ghostly outline of the back of the sheet. I say this not only to draw your attention to it but also because it is my favourite thing about the book. The contents were somewhat lacking. The essays chosen for this particular collection had very little in common, which made the collection as a whole feel disjointed. Being short, I find that having some commonality is all the more important. Why did the editor choose these essays in particular? Orwell was a prolific essay writer so there would have been plenty to choose from. As with any collections, there were some that I liked more than others, but I did find there to be this overarching sense of a man with privilege. Even in the essays which dealt with what could be considered as lower-class topics, such as 'Clink' and 'Hop-Picking Diary' is seemed obvious that Orwell's experiences were coming from a privileged position. This seemed to be contrary to what Orwell was trying to achieve, and resulting in dissatisfaction on both ends. Ultimately the lack of cohesion between these essays kills this as a collection.