Sunday, September 27, 2009

Banned Books Week 2009

IS THIS WHAT WE WANT...A RETURN TO THE DARK AGES?

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.


The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.

Banned and/or Challenged Books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century

*Titles in bold are the ones I have read

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. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov

11. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
12. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

13. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
14. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

15. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
16. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
17. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
18. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

19. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
20. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
21. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22. Native Son by Richard Wright
23. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
24. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
25. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
26. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

27. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

28. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

29. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

30. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

31. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
32. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

33. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

34. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

35. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

36. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
37. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

38. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

39. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

40. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

41. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

42. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Click Here for the reasons these books were challenged.


All information was obtained from ala.org


Happy (banned) Reading!




4 comments:

Thank you for visiting and taking the time to comment. It means so much.

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  1. I can't decide which one to read this year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So many great titles and authors. I am making a pledge to try to keep in mind those books that have been either banned or challenged everytime I am book shopping.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've read more of these than I thought and the ones that I haven't read don't necessarily appeal. I would totally read them in a second if they did!

    ReplyDelete
  4. There are several more on this list I want to read. I own most of them so someday.... =o)

    ReplyDelete
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