So today (or yesterday, I guess, as of almost three hours ago) marks the official start of Freedom to Read Week, which is like Banned Books Week, except Canadian. The idea is that you stick it to all those fools who somewhere along the line got the impression that freedom of speech ends just shy of the printing press by reading a bunch of books that seriously pissed said people off. I think it’s a peachy idea, although I never remember to schedule my reading appropriately (I read enough banned books anyway). I figured in the spirit of the week I’d compile a list of banned/challenged books I’ve read over the years, just like the nice lady over at 50 Books did.
Here’s my list (culled from a variety of lists, as the “offical” one on the Freedom to Read site is pretty thin):
- Aristophanes. Lysistrata
- Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles
- Brothers Grimm. The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales
- Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales
- Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness
- Dahl, Roald. James and the Giant Peach
- Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders
- Eliot, George. Silas Marner
- Escher, M.C. The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher
- Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby
- Golding, William. Lord of the Flies
- Handford, Martin. Where’s Waldo?
- Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises
- Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World
- Joyce, James. Ulysses
- Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- King, Stephen. It
- Lawrence, Margaret. Stone Angel
- Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird
- Lewis, C. S. Chronicles of Narnia
- Locke, John. Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- London, Jack. Call of the Wild
- Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Mayle, Peter. Where Did I Come From?
- Mitchell, W.O. Who Has Seen The Wind
- Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon
- Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita
- Orwell, George. 1984
- Richler, Mordecai. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
- Rockwell, Thomas. How to Eat Fried Worms
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Confessions
- Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and … (the whole series)
- Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses
- Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye
- Shakespeare, William. Hamlet
- Shakespeare, William. King Lear
- Shakespeare, William. Macbeth
- Shakespeare, William. Romeo & Juliet
- Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein
- Steinbeck, John. East of Eden
- Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five
This is all I can think of at the moment, although there must be more. (How could Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle avoid the list, for example, or Light in August? Given how much these idiots enjoy banning the very best, those two works should have been easy targets.) Interestingly, I have also read most of those over the last eight years.
