Banned Book Week: Your favorite banned book

Probably "The Giver," but I freely admit that while it's a good book, I enjoy it in large part due to this review where the banner clearly missed the whole damn point! I know I shouldn't enjoy schadenfreude so much, but dammit...

http://www.capalert.com/sexedabcdisney/thegiver1.htm

Allen Ginsburg's HOWL And Other Poems. I can't love a piece of 20th century poetry any more than I love this one. I have two copies; the first I bought at City Lights Books the first time I went San Francisco, the bookstore that championed this work and had it published at huge risk. The second is a draft facsimile with the original work plus a copy of the manuscript, complete with handwritten edits and notes.

There are quite a few books on the list I didn't like (Lord of the Flies, for instance), but I didn't see any reason that any of them should've ever been banned. I absolutely loved To Kill a Mockingbird when I read it! It's one that still has a place on my shelf even though, originally, I had to read it for school. In fact, some of these I had to read for school and that was a primary reason for my dislike!

Unfortunately, I have quite a lot happening at the moment and I don't know when I'll get to pick up a new book to read.

folclor said:

There are quite a few books on the list I didn't like (Lord of the Flies, for instance), but I didn't see any reason that any of them should've ever been banned. I absolutely loved To Kill a Mockingbird when I read it! It's one that still has a place on my shelf even though, originally, I had to read it for school. In fact, some of these I had to read for school and that was a primary reason for my dislike!

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Totally understand this. North of 90% of books I had to read in school, I disliked, either passively (because I resented having to choose from among books that didn't appeal to me) or actively (they really, personally hacked me off.) TKAM was about the only one I actually liked; it had an in with me because I could relate to Scout's sheer boredom with the public school system.

As for favorites... from the lists, the most prominent one would be Harry Potter.

And for the next banned book I might read... considering that my tastes lean toward fantasy (a.k.a gateways to Satanism) and science (a.k.a challenges to Biblical superiority), it's a fair bet that almost any book I pick up will, at some point, be challenged or cause offense to the kind of people who challenge and ban books. Makes reading all the more fun...

Wasn't sure where to put this but -- a district in Mississippi has removed To Kill a Mockingbird from reading lists.

Why, you might ask?

Biloxi administrators pulled the novel from the 8th-grade curriculum this week. School board vice president Kenny Holloway says the district received complaints that some of the book's language "makes people uncomfortable."...

"There were complaints about it. There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable, and we can teach the same lesson with other books," the district's vice president, Kenny Holloway, told The Sun Herald. "It's still in our library. But they're going to use another book in the 8th grade course."

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Sigh.

Maryn said:

It's a shocker to any reading teen or adult what books are on those ten-most-challenged lists. Quite a bit of it is YA fiction that normalizes what was previously "otherness" (gay, trans, drug-using, swearing, sexually active--just like a lot of real teens). Since I read only a little YA, I'll go with my long-time fave To Kill a Mockingbird.

I see The Color Purple is on there. Time for a reread, although I fear I loaned it to The Kid and may not have gotten it back. Help, is there a library? (Why yes, two blocks away. Settle down, Maryn.)

Maryn, also considering Of Mice and Men

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Although not a YA novel (at least I don't think so... (is 15+ YA??)) Dark Side of Joy would qualify because the MC starts out at 12 years old... and there's both sex and violence. Funny thing - most all of the positive comments I've gotten were from women. (will I have to turn in my chauvinist card?)

ETA: the only 'banned' book I have read is Malleus Maleficarum. Not sure if it's in the banned list though.

I will never stop posting this Onion article about Banned Books, because it is so funny and insightful. I've often wondered if Book Banners weren't secretly a force for good, trying to get kids to read more. I mean, they go on and on about how this book is so full of sex and violence, how reading it would really piss off their parents.

Though I also like the Onion article just for the paragraph about A Separate Peace. I had the same reaction to that book.

Link here: http://www.theonion.com/article/nations-teens-disappointed-by-banned-books-401

Interesting CSPAN panel on Banned Books: Banned Books Panelists talked about books that have been challenged because of the race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference of their characters... Always free to watch online or read the transcript.

Mostly because of CSPAN Book TV I love weekend TV programming.

We don’t have banned or ‘most challenged books’ in England.

I find the very concept rather disturbing, to be quite honest with you.

Azkaellion said:

We don’t have banned or ‘most challenged books’ in England.

I find the very concept rather disturbing, to be quite honest with you.

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Of course we have banned books in England.

Lady Chatterley's Lover, for example.

I have friends who write things which have been banned from certain libraries.

Please don't make assertions which aren't true. It doesn't help.

Azkaellion said:

We don’t have banned or ‘most challenged books’ in England.

I find the very concept rather disturbing, to be quite honest with you.

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Yes, books are, in fact, banned and challenged today in England. I could tell you a horror story about a pair of (very) religious English parents who objected to pretty much my entire syllabus a few years ago. The mother also terrorized the librarian after the younger sibling was permitted to read a Harry Potter novel at school: apparently "good church schools" in England had banned the entire Harry Potter series, according to Psycho Mum.

I think they are home schooling now...

If we're talking banned in America, then anything by Steinbeck.

Azkaellion said:

We don’t have banned or ‘most challenged books’ in England.

I find the very concept rather disturbing, to be quite honest with you.

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We have a strong history of censorship in England. There were two Obscene Publication Acts- Lady Chatterley's Lover is the most famous example of a book that was banned and had its publishers taken to court. Books were destroyed and banned from publication.

Theatre was also under censorship until 1967; there were popular American plays that couldn't be shown in English theatres because the Lord Chamberlain had to approve plays.

Also, in the 1980's, we had video nasties- a list of 72 films banned in the UK.

"Fahrenheit 451" is one of my all time favorite novels, and is also one of the most challenged. My mom tried to read it to me as a teenager and I got really bored, but I returned to it as an adult and... WOW. It is so prophetic.

I'll pick an old favorite: Slaughterhouse Five- Kurt Vonnegut.

Two that I'll read are Song of Solomon and A Separate Peace. The former I've been meaning to read for a while and the latter seems worth it.

I know it's only tangentially related to the discussion at hand, but I've adored this article from The Onion ever since I stumbled onto it.

Nation's Teens Disappointed By Banned Books

I especially enjoyed the part about A Separate Peace. I spent that entire book going, "Oh will you two just fuck already!" before I finally gave up. I looked up the end on Wikipedia; apparently they never did fuck, but it wouldn't have saved the novel if they had.

I absolutely cannot believe that someone challenged Eleanor & Park for being pornographic. Uh... did we even read the same book? I can at least see why people might object to some John Green, even though I absolutely do not agree, but Rainbow Rowell is so tame!

I've only ever really heard about the classic banned books like To Kill A Mockingbird and Fahrenheit 451, so this list was super interesting because it's giving me an idea of what people are challenging in more recent publications. People are just afraid of what they don't know and don't understand. Heaven forbid people actually explore ideas and viewpoints other than their limited ones, am I right?