There was an article on MSN today about some books that were (“surprisingly”) banned for one reason or another. This prompted me to go search for some other banned book lists and see just how many of them I have read. I realized quickly that these lists contained some of my favorite books, but also some that I had either never heard of or had zero interest in reading.
The reasons books get banned are many, but I’ve found that a lot of books get banned for somewhat…odd reasons. Now, I understand that you wouldn’t want a 7-year old picking up a book at the school library that talks extensively about the treatment of slaves and all, but isn’t there a lot of value in kids (at an appropriate age) learning about the darkness of the past? We have to learn from our mistakes, and hiding them from our youth will doom us to repeat them! I also know that all of these book are available in one way or another, but I feel that many of them should be made readily available to a wide range of people. Shoot, I wouldn’t mind starting a book club aimed at reading some of them!
Here’s a list of the ones I found that caught my eye for one reason or another:
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1984
Harry Potter Series
The Color Purple
Lolita
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Satanic Verses
The Catcher in the Rye
The Twilight series
Candide
Brave New World
The Anarchist Cookbook
And Tango Makes Three
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Bridge to Terabithia
A Clockwork Orange
The Grapes of Wrath
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Bluest Eye
James and the Giant Peach
The Witches by Ronald Dahl
Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl
Little Women
A Light in the Attic
A Wrinkle in Time
Forever by Judy Blume
The Golden Compass
Lord of the Flies
The Chocolate War
The Giver
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
The Lorax
The Da Vinci Code
Animal Farm
Gulliver’s Travels
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
Tropic of Cancer
Fanny Hill
The Great Gatsby
The Kite Runner
Of Mice and Men
Catch 22
Fahrenheit 451
Native Son
As I Lay Dying
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Handmaid’s Tale
In Cold Blood
Slaughterhouse Five
East of Eden
Of the 61 books on this list (while 52 are listed, I added for the two series in it), I have read only 27 of them. I would like to read an additional 17. There are 6 that I doubt I will ever read, which leaves 11 that I am basically ambivalent about or don’t know enough about to decide. What’s interesting to me is that the 27 I have read are some of the most entertaining books I have ever read in my life. Many of them were required reading when I was in school and I have since purchased in life.
I know there are hundreds of books that could be added to this list, but as a lover of reading, I felt that I need to blog about books at least once.
In closing, if anyone is looking for a great book, I highly recommend “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen, Janet Evanovich writes great mysteries, and Jodi Piccoult knows how to tug on your heart strings in many ways. I might blog about some of my reads as time goes on.