It still amazes me that in the year 2012 people are still trying to control what we can and can't read. It raises a lot of questions about freedom and morality and a whole bunch of other stuff I'm not sure I want to face at this time of the morning. (It's early for me!)
In honour of Banned Book Week, I thought I'd have a look at the ALA's list of Banned and Challenged Classics and see how many I've actually read. Let's see...
2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
9. 1984, by George Orwell
11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
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
45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
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
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
Huh. 13? That's not many at all. I guess that means there are 84 books that need to go on my To-Read list. (Actually, a few already are.)
Even though I've only read a dozen of these classics, I can say that not one of them didn't change my life in some way. Most of them made me cry, some of them left me stunned, and others... Well, I won't go into all the ways 1984 made me look at the world diffrently.
Another thing I can say is this: I would have been a lesser person for not reading them.
How dare someone - who no doubt believes in their "right to bear arms" - tell me that I don't have the right to expand my mind, my self, by reading these books?!
