It's Banned Books Week

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MrsSpringsteen

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Run for your lives, these books are dangerous!

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/37480/a-long-shelf-life

The American Library Association keeps an accounting of objectionable reads. We curled up with a good computer to check which forbidden pages still beckon readers and searchers.

1. "Harry Potter" (Series) (J.K. Rowling)
2. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Harper Lee)
3. "The Color Purple" (Alice Walker)
4. "The Outsiders" (S.E. Hinton)
5. "Lord of the Flies" (William Golding)
6. "Of Mice and Men" (John Steinbeck)
7. "Goosebumps" (Series) (R.L. Stine)
8. "How to Eat Fried Worms" (Thomas Rockwell)
9. "The Catcher in the Rye" (J.D. Salinger)
10. "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain)
11. "The Giver" (Lois Lowry)
12. "Brave New World" (Aldous Huxley)
13. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (Mark Twain)
14. "Captain Underpants" (Dav Pilkey)
15. "The Anarchist Cookbook" (William Powell)
16. "Carrie" (Stephen King)
17. "Flowers for Algernon" (Daniel Keyes)
18. "The Dead Zone" (Stephen King)
19. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (Maya Angelou)
20. "Go Ask Alice" (anonymous)
21. "American Psycho" (Bret Easton Ellis)
22. "The Chocolate War" (Robert Cormier)
23. "James and the Giant Peach" (Roald Dahl)
24. "The Pigman" (Paul Zindel)
25. "A Wrinkle in Time" (Madeleine L'Engle)

http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas," The One Un-American Act." Nieman Reports, vol. 7, no. 1 (Jan. 1953): p. 20.

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2006, marks BBW's 25th anniversary (September 23-30).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met."
 
Let's see. I've read 14 of them including the Anarchist's Cookbook. Evil subversive that I am. What are the safe ones that will fill me with all the proper virtues so I can avoid them like the plague?
 
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BonosSaint said:
Let's see. I've read 14 of them including the Anarchist's Cookbook. Evil subversive that I am. What are the safe ones that will fill me with all the proper virtues so I can avoid them like the plague?

I'm turning you in :tsk:

I would recommend My Pet Goat :D
 
What gets done to the Pet Goat? I remember the President's eyes opened wide during at least 7 minutes of it.
 
U2democrat said:
Captain Underpants is hilarious, a children's book.

Well I figured it was a children's book - either that or it's for guys who haven't mastered the art of underwear yet, or some weird fetish book :wink:

What the hell could be objectionable about that book? :lol:
 
Well I guess we're pretty cutting edge for a conservative Christian missionary school.

My wife's teaching To Kill a Mockingbird right now to our 7/8 Reading class and I've taught The Giver too. I know one of the classes read James and the Giant Peach a few years back.
 
I've read pretty much all of them (in fact as part of the curriculum in my Christian elementary/high schools), and I have to say that I don't think any are as controversial (from a relgious perspective) as Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials'.
 
what's on in the land of the free??? :scratch: :tsk:
wtf is The American Library Association? is this just another hypocritical us-american institution? i think its time you people over there cut their influence in cultural life.
i fear this is another coproduct of dumbass bush administration. watch out or otherwise they lead you to the dark side of the moon.
 
LivLuvAndBootlegMusic said:
I've read pretty much all of them (in fact as part of the curriculum in my Christian elementary/high schools), and I have to say that I don't think any are as controversial (from a relgious perspective) as Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials'.

You ever notice how it takes being popular to get banned. I'm sure there all kinds of "horrible" books out there that never got banned simply because they never made the NY Times bestseller list or got put on a school's required reading list.
 
jacobus said:
what's on in the land of the free??? :scratch: :tsk:
wtf is The American Library Association? is this just another hypocritical us-american institution? i think its time you people over there cut their influence in cultural life.
i fear this is another coproduct of dumbass bush administration. watch out or otherwise they lead you to the dark side of the moon.

erm, I don't think this has anything to do w/ GWB. Most of these books I remember our teachers telling us were banned in other schools, or my mom would say "read this it got banned when it first came out". This was LONG before GWB was in the picture.
 
maycocksean said:


You ever notice how it takes being popular to get banned. I'm sure there all kinds of "horrible" books out there that never got banned simply because they never made the NY Times bestseller list or got put on a school's required reading list.

Seriously. Actually, the third book in the series was taken off the shelf of the library at one of the local Christian schools. My friend's mom is the librarian and she took it off because she didn't want flack from parents. I'm kinda glad they are less popular :D
 
Books that are banned for mocking democracy, witch craft (hahaha) and other stuff.

Are we living in Nazi Germany were it's ok to burn books?
 
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jacobus said:
what's on in the land of the free??? :scratch: :tsk:
wtf is The American Library Association? is this just another hypocritical us-american institution? i think its time you people over there cut their influence in cultural life.
i fear this is another coproduct of dumbass bush administration. watch out or otherwise they lead you to the dark side of the moon.



you know, i dislike Bush as much as you do, but, really, not quite EVERYTHING is his fault. i know there's a European tendency to isolate one thing about the United States, and then try and fit every explanation for a variety of complex behavior into this single cause, but it's not terribly good thinking.

bush is a dumbass. he is leading us into a terrible place.

but he's not banning books. one has nothing to do with the other.
 
jacobus said:

wtf is The American Library Association? is this just another hypocritical us-american institution? i think its time you people over there cut their influence in cultural life.

If you go to the ALA website, the whole point of banned books week is that they are opposed to banning books. That's my interpretation of it.

It says right on their site "free people read freely". And books have been banned since books existed, it really has nothing to do with Bush or the USA. Certainly books have been banned all over the world.

James And The Giant Peach was my favorite book when I was a kid.
 
Aren't these books banned by the Politcal Correctness crowd - NOT the conservatives?
 
Well I think in general conservatives tend to be more concerned with what is in books, movies, TV shows-and more in favor of censorship.

If I had kids I would read books first before I let them read them, but I certainly don't want any random person telling me as a responsible adult what I can and cannot read. Banning books is the first step down a very dangerous road.
 
AEON said:
Aren't these books banned by the Politcal Correctness crowd - NOT the conservatives?



i think the only book that ever falls under that mantle is "Huck Finn" because of its use of the N-word.

nearly everything else is due to "morality," and we all know who thinks they've got a monopoly on what is and what is not moral ...
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


:eyebrow: Do you really believe this? Take a look at the list again my friend...

Ummm...Huck Finn has long been a favorite of the PC crowd to ban.

Also - Wrinkle in Time has a Christian Theme
 
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