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.