Banned Books

[David McLeod]

This list of "frequently challenged" books is only one of many, but it's pretty accurate, I think. How many of them have you read?

 

(Please do not quote this message when replying! Thanks.)

 

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. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov

12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White

14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

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

21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne

23. Their Eyes are 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

31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

37. The World According to Garp by John Irving

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

39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally

42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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

49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

51. My Antonia by Willa Cather

52. Howards End by E. M. Forster

53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

56. Jazz by Toni Morrison

57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron

58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

68. Light in August by William Faulkner

69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

82. White Noise by Don DeLillo

83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

87. The Bostonians by Henry James

88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster

99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Edited September 10, 2009 by David McLeod

[Rilbur]

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White

40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

51. My Antonia by Willa Cather

85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

 

Do I dare ask what these books are doing on the list? All of them are ones I read, and I really don't remember much about them that would spawn 'trouble'. There was a suicide scene in My Antonia, but that'sa bout all I remember from it...

 

Anyway, 15 / 100 books ain't half bad!

[Tarin]

I can only mark 18 of them, but about half of those I was assigned in school to read.

 

Some of my favourite books are on that list (i.e. Brave New World) but also some of my least (i.e. Invisible Man).

 

Guess I have a reading list now at least! Hehe.

 

 

 

Rilbur: To Kill a Mockingbird is about racism. The Lord of the Rings challenges God.

 

 

 

 

Edit to address Rilbur

 

 

Edited September 10, 2009 by Tarin

[Kia Zi Shiru]

4 I'm sure of, and 2 others I'm gonna read for my english class at school.... but a couple of others I probabky could have read but usually I read in dutch so the title doesn't ring a bell...

[Aeroplane]

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White 15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne 40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien 47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum 72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams 85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells 90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

 

So I've read 10 of them. Im not a fan of 'Literature' of the sort commonly assigned in English Lit classes, I generally find them dull, drab and often tedious, so I steer clear of them. If I could count the Lord of the Rings, Wizard of Oz and Hitchhiker's Guide as multiple books (they are all part of a series) I'd have read a lot more .

 

(I did quote, but I changed the format of your quote so it didnt take up ages of page )

 

Do I dare ask what these books are doing on the list? All of them are ones I read, and I really don't remember much about them that would spawn 'trouble'. There was a suicide scene in My Antonia, but that'sa bout all I remember from it...

 

Anyway, 15 / 100 books ain't half bad!

 

Well, this list of books is generally objected to by the excessively religious so... 4 is banned for displaying black people as human and for challenging injustice, 40 and 47 glorify magic and thus are the spawn of the devil , charlottes web I have no idea, perhaps it is a lead character being a pig? The other I havent heard of.

[MikeL]

There have been objections to reading Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in schools here because it contains the "N" word.

[Nephylim]

I've read 42 and I'm not going to list them all. Again I have to ask the question about why some of them are on the list... like LOTR ??? and Winnie the Pooh and Wind in the Willows. Also why is the Khama Sutra not on there

[Jack Frost]

Or Harry Potter.

[old bob]

What a list ! BTW, what do you mean with "frequently challenged" ?

I came to 49, most of them in french translations; and I saw a lot of movies made from some of these books.

The bests for me are two books, which I'm still re-reading now : "Winnie-the Pooh" and "Kim". But why are they on your list ?

 

And why only 100 books ?

Another book I could imagine to be on your list is "Story of O" (French: Histoire d'O), an erotic novel published in 1954 about dominance and submission by French author Pauline R

[Dolores Esteban]

What about Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasures) by John Cleland?

 

 

[Kia Zi Shiru]

I'm more amazed that The Satanic bible and the Necronomicon aren't on it

[Lugh]

50+ of them.... not so bad.

 

I know books are banned (or challenged) for various reasons throughout the years. Being as we homeschooled I made the banned book list our reading list most years. Yes, intentionally. Oddly, he picked of his own accord a banned book list book to read for his summer reading project. There is a site (and when I locate it I'll post it) that tells you why books were challenged, where, and the dispostion of the challenge. It makes interesting reading in and of itself.

 

 

 

1. 2. 3. 4. 7. 8. 9. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 22. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 32. 33. 35. 36. 37. 38. 40. 41. 47. 49. 51. 56. 57. 58. 62. 64. 68. 69. 72. 74. 77. 79. 85. 86. 89. 90. 92. 93. 94. 98. 99.

[Nephylim]

I'm more amazed that The Satanic bible and the Necronomicon aren't on it

 

 

Because they are sooo mild next to Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the Willows and Charlotte's Web

[JamesSavik]

Banned books are the only ones worth reading.

[hh5]

I take that public school still reads them or you can always goto barnes and noble

 

but is it truely a fat chance to read these books in front of a nun or priest

 

and not get hit by a ruler or a fist?

 

of course if you do get hit - nice law suit

[thatboyChase]

If I were to have anyone in the world, it would be Holden Caulfield.

[Fishwings]

I've read five.

 

Anyone read The House Of Scorpion?

[Zeoanne]

Don't you wonder how many of those who complained on these books are bible stompers?

Edited September 11, 2009 by Rush

[BlueSoxSWJ]

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding 9. 1984 by George Orwell 13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White 14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller 17. Animal Farm by George Orwell 19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway 32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway 33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London 40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien 70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

 

18, of which 14 were for English classes ranging from 5th (The Call of the Wild) through 12th (As I Lay Dying) grades.

[paya]

well according to this link http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/index.cfm, only 42 of them were banned or challenged... it's one of many 100 classic books list - so no, Winnie the Pooh wasn't challenged ;-)

 

on the other hand, this list makes me feel illiterate - but not being English native, I can excuse me having had to read classics in my native language (or translations to it) ;-)

[KJames]

Makes one wonder if the Bible would make the "Banned Books" list due to its references to violence, racism, derogatory slang towards prostitution, slavery and the like...anyone care to dissect it?

[TalonRider]

Makes one wonder if the Bible would make the "Banned Books" list due to its references to violence, racism, derogatory slang towards prostitution, slavery and the like...anyone care to dissect it?

And to think, they call it the Good Book.

[Drewbie]

Maybe four or more. I enjoyed reading animal farm

[David McLeod]

Thanks, everyone, for your posts, and especially for the additions to the list some folks proposed. Yeah, this is only one of several lists of "banned" or "challenged" books. I believe "challenged" means that schools and libraries have been formally asked (in school board meetings, city council meetings, etc.) to remove the books from the shelves or to restrict access. I, too, was surprised not to find "Huckleberry Finn" on the list, since it so often appears. "The Story of O," as well. I suspect they're on other lists, though. Keep the comments (and suggestions) coming. Oh, I counted 25 on this list that I'd read. Twenty six if watching the movie, "To Kill a Mockingbird" counts. (Just kidding.) My next step is to log on to the local library and cross check the list against their collection.

[Nephylim]

And to think, they call it the Good Book.

 

 

Well it does make for a good read... especially where it is soaked in blood so to speak. I mean Stephen King has nothing on the Bible writers when it comes to horror... plagues... genocide....infanticide... rivers running red with blood... men stripped of everything over a bet.... wow.