Bayley’s Bookshelf - Great Audiobooks

Part 1: Chapter 5 - Nineteen Eighty-Four

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This is happening now, we're just running a few decades late.

Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast

You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley

If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via:

• Bluesky: @RJBayley https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social
• Email: robertjbayley[AT]gmail.com
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This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws.

This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

Part 1: Chapter 6 - Nineteen Eighty-Four

I love it when main characters have unlikable aspects to them. Not every lead character needs to a best mate you want to go to the pub with. Travis Bickle isn't. They just need to be compelling.

Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon

I love it when main characters have unlikable aspects to them. Not every lead character needs to a best mate you want to go to the pub with. Travis Bickle isn't. They just need to be compelling.

Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast

You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley

If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via:

• Bluesky: @RJBayley https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social
• Email: robertjbayley[AT]gmail.com
• Website contact form at RJBayley.com: https://rjbayley.com/contact/
• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/

This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws.

This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

Part 1: Chapter 7 - Nineteen Eighty-Four

"It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances."

The Bit is in this chapter. You know. The Bit. You see it on all the memes created by both sides of the debate because they both think the other side wants the Orwellian future. Can you blame me for giving it some welly?

Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon

Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast

You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley

If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via:

• Bluesky: @RJBayley https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social
• Email: robertjbayley[AT]gmail.com
• Website contact form at RJBayley.com: https://rjbayley.com/contact/
• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/

This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws.

This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

(End of) Part 1: Chapter 8 - Nineteen Eighty-Four

"The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you. Undoubtedly some people did so. Many of the disappearances were actually suicides. But it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable. He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had acted quickly enough; but precisely because of the extremity of his danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body."

Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon

Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast

You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley

If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via:

• Bluesky: @RJBayley https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social
• Email: robertjbayley[AT]gmail.com
• Website contact form at RJBayley.com: https://rjbayley.com/contact/
• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/

This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws.

This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.

Part 2: Chapter 1 - Nineteen Eighty-Four

"He did not know why the Thought Police should choose to deliver their messages in such a fashion, but perhaps they had their reasons. The thing that was written on the paper might be a threat, a summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some description. But there was another, wilder possibility that kept raising its head, though he tried vainly to suppress it. This was, that the message did not come from the Thought Police at all, but from some kind of underground organization. Perhaps the Brotherhood existed after all!"

Thank you Learned Librarian Patreon: Jon

Listen to episodes ad-free and get other benefits on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BayleysBookshelfPodcast

You can also support this podcast with a one-off donation at Buy Me A Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rjbayley

If you’d like to send correspondence for me to read and discuss during an episode, or you would like to talk about me narrating your own audiobook or other voiceover services, you can contact via:

• Bluesky: @RJBayley https://bsky.app/profile/rjbayley.bsky.social
• Email: robertjbayley[AT]gmail.com
• Website contact form at RJBayley.com: https://rjbayley.com/contact/
• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RJBayleyVoiceArtist/

This book is in the public domain and this production is entirely created and distributed in accordance with local laws.

This audio production, however, is copyright to RJ Bayley 2025.