Banned Books Week--which actually isn't a week-long retreat for the Texas Board of Education, though I can understand any confusion about that--kicks off tomorrow.
Now, being me, a book getting banned or challenged almost automatically moves it to me "must read" list--especially since so often the book is being challenged by people who have never read the book. Incredible as that seems, it never seems to phase those who ban books.
The American Library Association has some great information about banned books, including the following list of most-often banned or challenged classics (and you can blame the lack of proper punctuation on them, not me--I just cut & pasted):
1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell 10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway 21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway 31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin 51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles 68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
These are the books that most frighten people. I will grant that some of these books are intended for a mature reader, but who in the world is threatened by Winnie the Pooh???????????? And why even bother to ban anything by James Joyce--I don't think any of us have ever understood his stuff anyway. Are they just afraid of excessive foot notes? And could there possibly be anything in ANY of these books that is even half as frightening as a small minority of people trying to control what others have the right to read?
8 comments:
How can a person who has not read a book judge whether or not a book should be banned? What qualifies them? And why should any book be banned? Very irritating
There are some of my favourite books on that list ... Makes me want to go and re-read them right away.
We have a history of not just banning but actually burning books here in Germany, and just look at the outcome - banning books leads to a society of uneducated dumba*** who'll follow any idiot to whatever cruel deed and afterwards say they didn't know or weren't in a position to judge. Disgusting.
Let people read whatever they want, and give them a forum to discuss what they've read. On a personal note, I'd suggest making sure that James Joyce books only come with soft covers, though. The edges of the hard covers poke nasty little holes in unexpected places when they land on your face when you fall asleep while trying to figure out what the books are all about. ;-)
Uh-oh. I've read most of those books, many because they were class assignments in high school and college. I'm doomed! And Faulkner was the one I could never understand.
I read Boston's list about a month ago. Huckleberry Finn was on it plus most of these. I'm surprised it wasn't on this list.
Winnie the Pooh and Wind in the Willows just crack me up. Many of these books are on high school reading lists because they do make you look at things from another prospective.
Obviously this is good publicity
because most of us will want to read the list or already have. Those are some very popular books and wonderful reading.
Okay, I'm trying to figure out why "Rebecca" was banned - I love it, but it's basically a variation on "Jane Eyre". And if potential bigamy doesn't bother a school/library board, why would an adulteress?
I feel pretty good about having read so many of these, but I'm saddened that so many people won't even have the chance to discover these great works because they're not on a library shelf.
I know a good number of these are on the reading list in schools for New South Wales, Australia. Oh, and Of Mice and Men? Yeah, I was in a school-wide musical version of that when I was in primary school. Yes, that one is to be much feared, especially when sung by primary school kids.
I remember having this discussion with a friend’s sister about the Harry Potter series when it first came out. Her church was telling its patrons to not read them. My first question to her was “Have you, or anyone else, actually read them?” The answer? “No.” Needless to say she now has all of the series.
It is definitely sad when a small group of people decide what is good reading and bad reading for you. Unfortunately I think it all boils down to a personal like or dislike. There are far too many on this list that really should be read by people, especially if they choose to read it for themselvesl. I have also read many on this list, and find nothing "bad" for me. Just makes me think harder about what the book is about and how it works into my life! Thanks Toni for listing all these, may have to start looking for them so that I can get reaquainted with the books!
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