lirazel | yay books!

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yay books!

Stolen from

dollsome:
List of Banned Book in the Original Meme:

1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
7. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
9. ttyl; ttfn; l8r g8r (series), by Myracle, Lauren
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
11. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
12. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
13. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
15. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
16. Forever, by Judy Blume
17. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
18. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
19. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
20. King and King, by Linda de Haan
21. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
22. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
23. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
24. In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
25. Killing Mr. Griffen, by Lois Duncan
26. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
27. My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier
28. Bridge To Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
29. The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney
30. We All Fall Down, by Robert Cormier
31. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
32. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
33. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
34. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
35. Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison
36. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
37. It’s So Amazing, by Robie Harris
38. Arming America, by Michael Bellasiles
39. Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
40. Life is Funny, by E.R. Frank
41. Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
42. The Fighting Ground, by Avi
43. Blubber, by Judy Blume
44. Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
45. Crazy Lady, by Jane Leslie Conly
46. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
47. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, by George Beard
48. Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez
49. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
50. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
51. Daughters of Eve, by Lois Duncan
52. The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
53. You Hear Me?, by Betsy Franco
54. The Facts Speak for Themselves, by Brock Cole
55. Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green
56. When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester
57. Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
58. Fat Kid Rules the World, by K.L. Going
59. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
60. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
61. Draw Me A Star, by Eric Carle
62. The Stupids (series), by Harry Allard
63. The Terrorist, by Caroline B. Cooney
64. Mick Harte Was Here, by Barbara Park
65. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
66. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor
67. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
68. Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez
69. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
70. Harris and Me, by Gary Paulsen
71. Junie B. Jones (series), by Barbara Park
72. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
73. What’s Happening to My Body Book, by Lynda Madaras
74. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
75. Anastasia (series), by Lois Lowry
76. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
77. Crazy: A Novel, by Benjamin Lebert
78. The Joy of Gay Sex, by Dr. Charles Silverstein
79. The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss
80. A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
81. Black Boy, by Richard Wright
82. Deal With It!, by Esther Drill
83. Detour for Emmy, by Marilyn Reynolds
84. So Far From the Bamboo Grove, by Yoko Watkins
85. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
86. Cut, by Patricia McCormick
87. Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume
88. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
89. Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissenger
90. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle
91. Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
92. The Boy Who Lost His Face, by Louis Sachar
93. Bumps in the Night, by Harry Allard
94. Goosebumps (series), by R.L. Stine
95. Shade’s Children, by Garth Nix
96. Grendel, by John Gardner
97. The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
98. I Saw Esau, by Iona Opte
99. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
100. America: A Novel, by E.R. Frank

American Library Association list of frequently banned/challenged classics:
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
11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
38. All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
57. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
66. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

My main question after reading this is: WHO ON EARTH WANTS TO BAN THE GIVER AND WHAT OBJECTION COULD THEY POSSIBLY HAVE TO IT?

I am a bit touchy about that book. I trace a toooon of my narrative kinks back to it, so.

There's a lot of classics I haven't read, apparently.

What's on here that I absolutely MUST read?

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1984.

It's not fun, but it's brilliant and insightful (though very dystopian).

Yeah, I've always meant to read it, and I just haven't gotten around to it yet, weirdly. I love dystopian stuff, though. (That's one of those kinks I think originates with The Giver).

I'm going to anti-recommend a book for you. Do not read Of Mice and Men. I'm reading it for my English GCSE, and every lesson I get so angry about how sexist (and racist) it is. Ugh. Least favourite book ever.

It's an interesting list; I recognise quite a lot of them, yet have read very few. I am particularly amused by the presence of Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging.

I don't imagine I'd be a huge Steinbeck fan, so I will take your word for it!

Actually, I think you might really like East of Eden--the language is beautiful and it's easily my favorite Steinbeck. But, yeah. Of Mice and Men isn't that great.

East of Eden *fistbumps*

I actually really like Of Mice and Men and would recommend it... Granted, I read it in ninth grade for English class and don't remember a lot of the finer details, but the ending was poignant, and it was one of the few forced-to-read-for-school books that I felt glad afterward to have read.

The Things They Carried is gut-wrenching and a difficult read but so, so fascinating if you know nothing about the Vietnam War (which I didn't when I read it). It's also a collection of short stories, so it's possible to read a few and get the gist but then stop if it's too much.

The Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging series is a joy! The last few books got stupid, but the first few gave me some of the most laughter/joy of any other books growing up.

I love:
The Chocolate War
Bless Me Ultima (I think you might like this)
Song of Solomon
Brave New World
A Handmaid's Tale (You should read this!!!!)
Lolita (You might love this for the language--it's seriously a miracle, the way that Nabakov writes--even if the subject matter is off-putting. So, I still strongly recommend it.)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (I think you'd like this)
Invisible Man
The Awakening (read this tooo!!! Proto-feminism at its finest.)

On the topic of books, I'm seriously thinking of getting a kindle now that they've dropped the price. (And then I can steal books and read them!)

Catch-22, definitely, though it's patchy. When it hits, it hits hard.

1984 and Brave New World others have already mentioned and I agree.

Brideshead Revisited, which is not a story about posh people doing posh things but actually about the tragedy and rigour of having faith in the modern world (I totally missed that on first reading and reread ten years later boggling at how I'd misread Waugh's meaning).

In Cold Blood is gripping, but hellish biased by Capote's thing for one of the killers and overall quite grim.

If I could get back the hours I've lost to Gone With The Wind and Lady Chatterley's Lover, I would be a richer person. Not my thing, in either case. I rather feel like that about the Catcher in the Rye, but at least it's short...

Oh God, how I hate Catcher in the Rye. Teaching teenage boys that their problems are more important than anyone else in the world's since 1951! They should print that on the cover.

Wow, I did not get that off Catcher in the Rye at all. Holden Caulfield is basically a seriously clinically depressed dude suffering various anxiety disorders, no? I mean, I don't think you have to be a privileged teenage boy for that to resonate.

I don't know... I'll buy the anxiety disorders, but I don't think he's clinically depressed. I think he has fairly run of the mill teen angst coupled with an anxiety disorder. But even then... all he does the entire book is privilege his own experience over everyone else's. No one GETS him. No one UNDERSTANDS. They're all PHONIES! Society can't pin Holden down, man! It all reminds me very much of myself at 14. And I was a douchebag.

lol, I was a douchebag at 14 as well. But that aside, I kinda don't see how you could say he wasn't clinically unwell--he wound up in a mental institution, after having some sort of breakdown. (I haven't read it in years, but if I recall correctly, Holden's basic trauma was the death of his brother and also witnessing his classmate commit suicide.) I just... That's not run-of-the-mill teen angst to me.

haha. I actually don't remember any of that! That can't say good things about my fading memory in my old age. So, that's fair enough. I think I was basing my teen angst feeling just on the tone of his internal monologues. And his utter lack of self reflection (if I recall--which I apparently probably don't). But, yeah. It's been a long time since I read that book--like 15 years. So, it's likely that the douchey 14-year-old version of me didn't have a very well honed ability to read between the lines of what he was ~thinking and what he was actually ~feeling. If that makes sense.

Oh, it's manifest that Holden was a self-centered prick. (And okay well, we're all self-centered pricks at that age.) I think the thing about Holden's monologue (and that I thought Salinger actually drew pretty realistically) is that he deliberately avoids topics that aren't trite or banal--so, the guy has serious reasons to be as unhappy as he is, but he never reflects on those reasons in his monologue for long, because the subject matter is too painful. Really unreliable narrator, basically.

Right that makes sense. My 9th grade English teacher... did not cover that.

But, I do remember the institution. But I thought the implication was just that he was being locked away because he didn't conform to society's silly rules--which is very much the case in other works of the same era, like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Or is that just what Holden is telling himself while meanwhile he's really being treated for a breakdown? Or am I just totally remembering all of this all wrong?

Or is that just what Holden is telling himself while meanwhile he's really being treated for a breakdown?

... Yeah, this I presume. I actually can't remember how he landed himself in the institution, but I know he didn't actually DO anything really bad/illegal/whatever throughout the book--so, it must have just been a nervous breakdown. (I'm sure he probably made it sound to the reader that he was in there 'cause he was a ~rebel, man.)

Catcher in the Rye is good, if you go in with the understanding that the main character is really self-involved and kind of a dick. I really like Blood and Chocolate too, but I'm one of the five people the ending worked for. Oh, and The Handmaid's Tale (another dystopian one). Shade's Children is good dystopian YA.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

...the movies are good! I still haven't gotten around to the books.

Truman Captoted basically invented a genre with In Cold Blood (true crime novel). ...another which I have yet to read. I should also read Lolita, so when I complain about people misinterpreting it I can actually do so with authority.

The Giver has been challenged because of the way it depicts suicide and euthanasia. No, it doesn't make any sense. Neither does challenging A Wrinkle in Time because it "undermines religious beliefs" and "sends a mixed signal to children about good and evil". People can be so DUMB.

I second the recs for The Handmaid's Tale (especially terrifying to read with an election coming up!) and Lolita, which I thought would repulse me (and in some ways it did), but which I did not realize would be both funny and so gorgeously written that I just kept rereading passages over and over. Also, And Tango Makes Three is a picture book based on a true story of two male penguins who fall in love at a zoo and adopt a baby penguin, and it is ADORABLE.

I know I lose my former-disaffected-teen badge for this, but I was so unimpressed with Catcher in the Rye. I don't even remember if I finished it. I do remember being pretty blown away by Brave New World and Bluest Eye.

Favorites, though: Handmaid's Tale I think you will like! It is dystopia + feminism, so basically 65% of everything that is awesome. MATH. And I cannot recommend Their Eyes Were Watching God highly enough.

1984 - yes! And His Dark Materials.

I very much second Brideshead Revisited! One of my favourite stories, though I have more of an attachment to the series because I saw that first and it shaped my reading of the novel. It, admittedly, hits a lot of my story-kinks (or shaped them, not always clear) - love triangle done well, aristocratic boy destroying himself, dysfunctional families etc. So I can imagine other people with other tastes finding it boring or just uninteresting, but to me it is one of the most important books I've ever read in terms of shaping my literary taste.

Other than that, if you like dystopia you can't not read 1984 and Brave New World, both of which I enjoyed quite a lot.

And I personally also love Satanic Verses, but that one is VERY controversial not just in the well-known religious way, but as a literary work as well. We had to read it last year for class and the divide between loved it/ hated it was about equal. It is quite confusing and very magic realist (which I love, so), and the plot and characterizations stay pretty basic. But I thought the themes and imagery were great, and I adore Rushdie's writing for reasons I find hard to articulate. It's kind of musical? :)

WHO ON EARTH WANTS TO BAN THE GIVER AND WHAT OBJECTION COULD THEY POSSIBLY HAVE TO IT?
The Giver! I really, really love the scene where…I think Jonas’s best friend throws him an apple and he starts to see the color red? Like, I was so absorbed in the the way their world functioned that it never occurred to me that they didn’t even have color.

In addition to the suicide and euthanasia issues, there’s the stuff about Jonas having “stirring” dreams about his friend, Fiona. PUBERTY, OH HORRORS. D:

I would warn someone before recommending the book, though. My sister was reaaally disturbed by the scene where Jonas’s father lethally injects a baby.

I thought it was really interesting what Madeleine L’Engle had to say about A Wrinkle in Time:
It was also my affirmation of a universe in which I could take note of all the evil and unfairness and horror, and yet believe in a loving Creator. I thought of it, at that time, as probably a very heretical book, theologically speaking, which is a delightful little joke at my expense, because it is, I have been told, theologically a completely orthodox book. The Holy Spirit has a definite sense of humor.

Not on the list, but have you read her Walking on Water?

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yay books!

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