Orwell Diaries

A few weeks back I shared a link to a blog which is posting George Orwell's diary. They are posting each entry exactly 70 years from it's original date of publication. I fell behind immediately, but tonight decided to empty my Google Reader and go back and read the 14 or so entries so far.

It's an extremely interesting site, both because of Orwell's reputation but also because of the insight into his writing process. The entries I've read so far are all between one sentence and one paragraph, and they are simply observations about his day. He is accounting the different species of snake, owl and moths he is encountering, the weather, and other natural observations. What's really cool is that the creators of the site have linked any reference to specific objects or places to their Wikipedia entry and have created a Google Map with push pins in the places he mentions.

I guess that Orwell starts to get political in his September entries, but so far it's been all snakes and weather descriptions. If you get the chance, it's rather fascinating.