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2006/09/25

Banned Books Week

Also at BlogJosh.

It's banned book week. Here's a (probably partial) list of books that have been banned at some point in the last 100 years. Bold: what I've read. Italic: on my reading list. Join the fun, and give me recommendations (whether I should read something I haven't indicated is on my list, or not read something I have). The ALA explains why the books have been banned.

This post has local relevance: The Vernon-Verona-Sherill School District challenged The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, A Farewell to Arms and A Separate Peace.

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

Thanks to Sassy Pants for cluing me in.
Comments:
What I always find interesting how the same book can be banned in different eras, for almost diametrically opposed reasons. Case in point - To Kill a Mockingbird caused a stir when it was first published because it showed how racism poisoned the meting out of justice in the South. More recently, the book has come under fire from some activists because of some of its language - the use of the "n word" in particular, I believe.
 
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