Section I of 1984 contains some great Big Ideas. It made me think about: 
 Private vs. Public sphere 
 Work/life balance 
 Text, Twitter, Corporatese 
 Current state of news reporting 
 Fear as basis for maintaining power 
 Humans becoming desensitized to violence 
 Autocratic regime's use of behavioral psychology 
 However, the book suffered from: 
 Repetitiveness 
 Sensationalism of violence 
 Simplistic worldview 
 Cartoonish characters 
 Long section of sci-fi political philosophy 
 Taken on its own, I would not recommend this novel except as an exercise to entertain Big Ideas. Combined with Orwell's bio and some books about U.S. socio-political position in the 40's, though, I bet it would make for interesting historical criticism.