Read a Banned Book

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This week is American Library Association’s Banned Book Week, south of the border (the Canadian Library Association promotes Freedom to Read Week in February each year). I thought I would check in on the most frequently banned and challenged books and see how many I’ve read. Here’s the top 10

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

I’ve only read 4. I checked the full list of 100 and found I’ve read only 17 (though I know the plots of several more, thanks to Hollywood).  Partly this is because these are “literary classics” — the canon, if you will. Not exactly bestsellers in the modern sense. Happily the ALA offers more modern lists, so I checked the list of 100 from 2000-2009. Here’s that top 10:

1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
7. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
9. ttyl; ttfn; l8r g8r (series), by Myracle, Lauren
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

Huh. Only 3 this time (though in my defense, two of those are series). Expanding to the full 100, I count 24 — better but there are plenty more I could read and, since a lot of the more contemporary ones are kid-lit, they’ll be quicker reads.

On a related note, while I am not a librarian, the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights makes me very proud to work in a library (I couldn’t find a Canadian equivalent but if you know of one, please let me know).

3 Replies to “Read a Banned Book”

  1. I was surprised to find that I’ve read 8 of the first list. The second list, though… I’ve not even heard of several of those. Perhaps I should add them to my reading list? Or is that just a shallow act of contrarianism?

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  3. Suzanne, most of the books in the second list are teen reads and kid lit — up to you if you want to add em to your list. While I’ve read His Dark Materials, it was a SLOG of a read and I wouldn’t recommend it. I will likely seek out some of the others.