Banned Books Week | Book Chatter

Read a Banned Book

This week is Banned Books Week. There seems to be less publicity for it than in years past so I thought I’d share a list of the most challenged classics and highlight which ones I’ve read. This list if from the American Library Association.

Bold = I’ve read it.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
1984, by George Orwell
Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (tried to read)
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
Native Son, by Richard Wright
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess (tried to read 2x)
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron
Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles (favorite book ever)
Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

Not an eye-opening amount but I’ve read several. I lean towards content that challenges me in different ways so I suppose it’s not surprising that I’ve read a handful of these.

The one book on here that I’d really like to read is A Clockwork Orange. I have tried to read it two times but rather unsuccessfully. I think both times, I gave up on it less than fifty pages in. It’s just a challenge I’ve set for myself.

What’s the one book on here that you’d like to read?

Fahrenheit 451

I have been sick all week. Just a bad head cold but bad enough to make me miserable. SO miserable, that when I was in bed and realized that I left my copy of The Bone Clocks downstairs, the mere thought of getting up to get it was too much. So, I looked at my nightstand and I pulled out my old, worn copy of Fahrenheit 451. It is Banned Books Week after all.

Now, I have read this book many times. I think, at least three times but never in my life have I shed tears over the writing. I have been all choked-up while reading it. Published in the early 50’s, this book was way ahead of its time. The world within these pages is just so similar to our world today. The large TV screens (4th wall), the ear shells (ear pods/iPods) and the constant stream of noise that is a part of our daily lives. It’s overwhelming and scary and every night this week I have been staring wide-eyed into its pages and just wondering, what’s next?

In case you haven’t read this classic, it’s about firemen and how their main purpose is to destroy books by burning. In their minds, they’re doing everyone a favor. Too much information is dangerous. I can’t even begin to fathom living in a world like this but take this week as an example, there are school boards out there who have decided to ban books this week! Yes! During Banned Books Week!! How insane is that?

Pretty insane.

Have you read the Bible? The stories in there will curl your toes! Just sayin’.

Anyway, I am enjoying my week with Fahrenheit 451. Maybe the cold meds have a lot to do with how emotional I’ve been while reading it but the passages… oh! Some of the passages are just so lovely and powerful. I want to print them all out and hang them around my house.

Are you reading a banned book this week?

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