{"id":192,"date":"2005-03-01T11:26:14","date_gmt":"2005-03-01T11:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=192"},"modified":"2005-03-01T11:26:14","modified_gmt":"2005-03-01T11:26:14","slug":"how_many_banned_books_have_you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2005\/03\/01\/how_many_banned_books_have_you\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Banned Books Have You Read?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uh-oh, it’s another LiveJournal meme. Surf on if you’re not interested in gaining further insight into my questionable tastes and interests…<\/p>\n

Still here? Oh, good, then let’s talk about banned books. What follows is a list of the 110 all-time banned books. Exactly what the term “all-time” means is open to interpretation, since the LiveJournaller I appropriated this from wasn’t sure who compiled the list or what criteria were used in choosing items for it. Nevertheless, these are books that at some point have gotten somebody’s ruffles in a bunch. The idea of this meme (presumably) is to demonstrate to all the world how enlightened, literate, countercultural, or just plain contrary you may be by showing how many of these you’ve read.<\/p>\n


\nBook-banning — media censorship in general, actually — is one of those issues that are near and dear to my heart. Nothing sets me off like some self-righteous prat trying to tell me that people shouldn’t be reading, hearing or seeing something because they find it offensive, or because it contradicts their particular worldview, or because it simply makes them uncomfortable. The equation is simple: if you don’t like being uncomfortable, then don’t expose yourself to those things that give you the wiggins. I’m cool with someone not watching R-rated films or not reading particular books if they have good reasons for avoiding them. But I get very angry when someone starts to think I<\/i> shouldn’t have access to the same material. After all, one person’s abomination is someone else’s work of heartbreaking beauty.<\/p>\n

The thing I find really interesting about this booklist is how many of the items on it strike me as wholly inoffensive. Maybe it’s just because I’ve spent my whole life defining myself as an outsider in a very conservative culture, but I just don’t understand what could possibly cause some of these choices to have been banned. For example, I know Huckleberry Finn<\/i> sets a lot of people off because of the frequent use of “the n-word,” but what’s wrong with Tom Sawyer<\/i>? Or James and the Giant Peach<\/i>, one of the few children’s books I still remember today? Or how about Little House on the Prairie<\/i>? What could possibly have caused that book to be banned? I’ve never read it, but I know lots of little girls who have without losing their eyesight, and I’ve seen the classic (if rather syrupy) TV show, and I just can’t imagine what about this text could have provoked the anti-book types.<\/p>\n

In any event, here’s the list. The titles I’ve read completely are in bold text, the ones I’ve read portions of are italicized, and the ones I’d like to read (or complete) are underlined.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Bible<\/i><\/li>\n
  2. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain<\/b><\/li>\n
  3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes<\/li>\n
  4. The Koran<\/li>\n
  5. The Arabian Nights<\/i><\/li>\n
  6. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain<\/b><\/li>\n
  7. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift<\/i><\/li>\n
  8. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer<\/i><\/li>\n
  9. Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne<\/b><\/li>\n
  10. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n
  11. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli<\/i><\/li>\n
  12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe<\/li>\n
  13. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank<\/b><\/li>\n
  14. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert<\/li>\n
  15. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens<\/b><\/li>\n
  16. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo<\/li>\n
  17. Dracula by Bram Stoker<\/b><\/li>\n
  18. Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin<\/span><\/li>\n
  19. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding<\/li>\n
  20. Essays by Michel de Montaigne<\/li>\n
  21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n
  22. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon<\/span><\/li>\n
  23. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy<\/span><\/li>\n
  24. Origin of Species by Charles Darwin<\/span><\/li>\n
  25. Ulysses by James Joyce<\/i><\/li>\n
  26. Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio<\/li>\n
  27. Animal Farm by George Orwell<\/b><\/li>\n
  28. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell<\/b><\/li>\n
  29. Candide by Voltaire<\/b><\/li>\n
  30. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee<\/b><\/li>\n
  31. Analects by Confucius<\/li>\n
  32. Dubliners by James Joyce<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n
  33. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck<\/b><\/li>\n
  34. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway<\/b><\/li>\n
  35. Red and the Black by Stendhal<\/li>\n
  36. Das Capital by Karl Marx<\/li>\n
  37. Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire<\/li>\n
  38. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<\/span><\/li>\n
  39. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence<\/span><\/i> (***There’s a funny story related to my exposure to this book, which occurred in a dorm room at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England. Unfortunately, I think it’s one of those “you had to be there” stories…)<\/li>\n
  40. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley<\/b><\/li>\n
  41. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser<\/li>\n
  42. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchel<\/li>\n
  43. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair<\/b><\/li>\n
  44. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque<\/b><\/li>\n
  45. Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx<\/li>\n
  46. Lord of the Flies by William Golding<\/b><\/li>\n
  47. Diary by Samuel Pepys<\/span><\/i> (***I actually have a complete, nine-volume edition of this monumental work, and I’d love to someday be able to say I’ve read the whole thing, but I don’t know when that may ever happen…)<\/li>\n
  48. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway<\/b><\/li>\n
  49. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy<\/b><\/li>\n
  50. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury<\/span><\/li>\n
  51. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak<\/span><\/li>\n
  52. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant<\/li>\n
  53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey<\/span><\/li>\n
  54. Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus<\/li>\n
  55. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller<\/span><\/li>\n
  56. Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X<\/li>\n
  57. The Color Purple by Alice Walker<\/span><\/li>\n
  58. Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke<\/li>\n
  59. Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison<\/li>\n
  60. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe<\/li>\n
  61. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn<\/li>\n
  62. East of Eden by John Steinbeck<\/b><\/li>\n
  63. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison<\/span><\/li>\n
  64. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou<\/li>\n
  65. Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau<\/li>\n
  66. Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais<\/li>\n
  67. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes<\/li>\n
  68. The Talmud<\/li>\n
  69. Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau<\/li>\n
  70. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson<\/li>\n
  71. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence<\/li>\n
  72. American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser<\/li>\n
  73. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler<\/li>\n
  74. A Separate Peace by John Knowles<\/b><\/li>\n
  75. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath<\/li>\n
  76. The Red Pony by John Steinbeck<\/span><\/li>\n
  77. Popol Vuh<\/li>\n
  78. Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith<\/li>\n
  79. Satyricon by Petronius<\/li>\n
  80. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl<\/b><\/li>\n
  81. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov<\/span><\/li>\n
  82. Black Boy by Richard Wright<\/b> (**I think I’ve read this one; it may have been Wright’s Native Son, though. It was way back in high school, so it’s a bit hazy at this point…)<\/li>\n
  83. Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu<\/li>\n
  84. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut<\/span><\/li>\n
  85. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George<\/li>\n
  86. Metaphysics by Aristotle<\/li>\n
  87. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder<\/li>\n
  88. Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin<\/li>\n
  89. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse<\/li>\n
  90. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene<\/b><\/li>\n
  91. Sanctuary by William Faulkner<\/li>\n
  92. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner<\/li>\n
  93. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin<\/span><\/li>\n
  94. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig<\/li>\n
  95. Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<\/li>\n
  96. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud<\/i><\/li>\n
  97. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood<\/li>\n
  98. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown<\/span><\/li>\n
  99. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess<\/li>\n
  100. Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines<\/li>\n
  101. Emile by Jean Jacques Rousseau<\/li>\n
  102. Nana by Emile Zola<\/li>\n
  103. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier<\/li>\n
  104. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin<\/span><\/li>\n
  105. The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn<\/li>\n
  106. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein<\/span><\/li>\n
  107. Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck<\/li>\n
  108. The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark<\/li>\n
  109. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As I review the list, I’m proud to see that I’ve read quite a few of these titles… the benefits of a liberal education, I suppose. I also find it interesting that I have no interest whatsoever in Russian or French writers, something I didn’t really realize until I started marking the things I’d like to read. I don’t really know why I’m not interested in them, but I’m not. Another observation: I find I’d like to finish most of the pieces that I’ve only read parts of, but as always there is the question of finding the time. It always comes down to that, doesn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Uh-oh, it’s another LiveJournal meme. Surf on if you’re not interested in gaining further insight into my questionable tastes and interests… Still here? Oh, good, then let’s talk about banned books. What follows is a list of the 110 all-time banned books. Exactly what the term “all-time” means is open to interpretation, since the LiveJournaller […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memes-and-quizzes","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}