Saturday, October 2, 2010

BANNED BOOKS WEEK--LOOKING AHEAD TO READING DELIBERATELY

Banned Books Week always makes me contemplative about my reading.  In my thinking lately, I have decided to make some changes in my reading in 2011...to read more deliberately.  This will involve cutting back on books I accept for review, focusing on reading from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list and reading more "classics".  Some of the books I plan to read occur simultaneously on both Banned Books lists and the "1001" list.

Here are several I have picked out for next year:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Click HERE to read the reasons for challenges to these classics on the ALA site.

See you next year for the next Banned Books Week! Until then, keep this in mind...

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

— On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

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