Propaganda – DaneCobain.com

Terry Pratchett and Gray Jolliffe – The Unadulterated Cat | Review

Title: The Unadulterated Cat

Author: Terry Pratchett and Gray Jolliffe

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 162

Rating: 7/10

Terry Pratchett and Gray Jolliffe – The Unadulterated Cat

This humorous little book from author Terry Pratchett and illustrator Gray Jolliffe is an entertaining insight into the world of our feline friends. Specifically, we’re talking about real cats – not those domesticated schmucks who just sit around all day.

Ostensibly a propaganda piece for the Campaign for Real Cats, the book explains, “The real unadulterated cat is under threat of extinction as more and more of us settle for the boring, mass-produced, purr-fect pussycats that appear in adverts – the fluffy cats that wear bows and eat from gold-plated bowls marked Kitty.”

All-in-all, it is a bit of a novelty book, but don’t let that detract from it – it’s still a fun little read, and it would make for a great gift for any cat lover. And the illustrations are fricken awesome, too – kudos to Gray Jolliffe, great job.

Terry Pratchett

Click here to buy The Unadulterated Cat.

George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia | Review

Title: Homage to Catalonia

Author: George Orwell

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 250

Rating: 10/10

George Orwell – Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia is Orwell at his best, a book which tells the true story of Orwell’s time serving with the POUM in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Orwell’s Group, the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, was a revolutionary group which fought alongside a mixture of socialists, communists and anarchists against the fascists led by General Franco.

Orwell served on the front line and witnessed the injustice of the war first hand and covers it in a way that no journalist could. So dedicated was Orwell to the war effort, he was almost killed when a fascist sniper shot him in the throat while he was at the front line.

POUM

The big surprise is the disconnect between what’s happening at the front and what’s happening in Barcelona, behind the lines. Orwell shows that the war was not fought with human lives at all, but with propaganda between the differing anti-Nationalist armies, propaganda that caused such a disconnect between each party that it may have lost them the war.

Whether you care about its political niceties or not, Homage to Catalonia is deeply gripping and a powerful glimpse into a window of history that, if you’re like me, you’ve never thought to open. But I can almost guarantee that by the time you get to the end of it, you’ll care deeply about the political niceties. Viva Poum!