Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Orwell That Ends Well

I'm nearly finished George Orwell's Burmese Days - only chapters 24 and 25 remaining. I've written about my difficulties downloading a copy of the novel in a previous post. In spite of the problems downloading the novel, I'd say reading the novel was worth the inconvenience I experienced.

In 2015, Orwell's Animal Farm made my reading list. I can't recall if I had read the book in my younger days - when I would have been obligated to do so. I'm reasonably certain that I've read Orwell's 1984 but I couldn't possibly say when that might have been. I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to download a copy and read it now, while I'm reading other works by the writer.

I went to george-orwell.org to repeat the process I followed with Burmese Days - copy - paste - convert to pdf - convert to mobi - one section at a time.

All seemed to be going well until I noticed an error in the on line version of the novel at the end of Part Two, Chapter Nine. Using the text on line at Project Gutenberg Australia, I was able to correct the error, but it made me wonder - If there was an error in Part Two of the novel as found at george-orwell.org, could there be an error in Part One as well? Is it possible that the copy of Burmese Days found on george-orwell.org contains an error that I'm unaware of?

I hope not. For two reasons - the obvious reason that I'd like to read Burmese Days as written, but also, I'd like to go even further and download other novels by Orwell and I'd like to be confident that the novels I download are error free. Is that too much to ask?

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