Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Top 100 Banned Books of All Time

My first goal is to read through the books on this list. I have some under my belt already, but I will start with number 100 and work my way up the list, book by book, already read or not. Why on earth would anybody bother banning books? Ideas, words, precious sweet taste of life. I'm surprised that the Bible did not make it on the list, all things considered. But that's fine. I read that semi-regularly as it is.

The list! The Notorious list of bandits! My first conquest, Number 100, Midnight's Children , Salman Rushdie. Can anybody tell me why Winnie the Pooh made the list though? That one confuses me. And Charlotte's Web! WHY?! I felt my brain start to die a little when I saw those two. o.O OI!

  1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
  3. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
  5. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
  6. Ulysses, James Joyce
  7. Beloved, Toni Morrison
  8. The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
  9. 1984, George Orwell
  10. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
  11. Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov
  12. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
  13. Charlotte's Web, EB White
  14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
  15. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
  16. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  17. Animal Farm, George Orwell
  18. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
  19. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
  20. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
  21. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
  22. Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne
  23. Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
  24. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
  25. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
  26. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
  27. Native Son, Richard Wright
  28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
  29. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
  30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
  31. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
  32. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
  33. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
  34. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
  35. Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
  36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
  37. The World According to Garp, John Irving
  38. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
  39. A Room with a View , EM Forster
  40. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
  41. Schindler's List, Thomas Keneally
  42. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
  43. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
  44. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce
  45. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
  46. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
  47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum
  48. Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence
  49. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
  50. The Awakening, Kate Chopin
  51. My Antonia, Willa Cather
  52. Howard's End, EM Forster
  53. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
  54. Franny and Zooey, JD Salinger
  55. Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
  56. Jazz, Toni Morrison
  57. Sophie's Choice, William Styron
  58. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
  59. Passage to India, EM Forster
  60. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
  61. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor
  62. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  63. Orlando, Virginia Woolf
  64. Sons and Lovers, DH Lawrence
  65. Bonfire of the Vanities, Thomas Wolfe
  66. Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
  67. A Separate Peace, John Knowles
  68. Light in August, William Faulkner
  69. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James
  70. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
  71. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
  72. A Hithchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
  73. Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
  74. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
  75. Women in Love, DH Lawrence
  76. Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
  77. In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway
  78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein
  79. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
  80. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
  81. The Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
  82. White Noise, Don DeLillo
  83. O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
  84. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
  85. The War of the Worlds, HG Wells
  86. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
  87. The Bostonians, Henry James
  88. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
  89. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
  90. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
  91. This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  92. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
  93. The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
  94. Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
  95. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
  96. The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  97. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
  98. Where Angels Fear to Tread, EM Forster
  99. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
  100. Midnight's Children , Salman Rushdie
My second goal is to kill the end of that BBC list. Here's working.
Vix

BBC. Hmm. I have a new GOAL!

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other book nerds.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -Own, will read.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien *
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - *
4 Harry Potter series *
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - *
6 The Bible *
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell -One day. Haven't gotten that far yet.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman *
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens -Will read. Classic.

Total: 7 (Already over the most people limit. Hmm.)

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Own, Will Read.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy -Own, will read
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - Someday
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -Many, not all.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier -This is a new one. Hmm.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien*
17 Birdsong 2nd new.
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - I forget, but I think so...*
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife -Will read.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot -3rd new title.

Total: 1.5

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Own, Will Read
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Not yet, but soon-ish.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens -Will read.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy * Part of. With Crime and Punishment, that makes one full star.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy *
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -Part of, With War and Peace, that makes one full star.
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - Will read.
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Own, Will read.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - *

Total: 3

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy Not yet.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis *
34 Emma-Jane Austen -Own, will read.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen -Own, will read.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - *
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein -Not yet.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -Not yet.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Not yet. Really want to.
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - *- Duh!

Total: 4

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -Not yet.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown -Soonish.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez -4th new title.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - JOhn Irving - -5th new title.
45 The Woman in White - Not yet.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy -One day.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - Not yet.
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - *
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan *Have on borrow, not totally finished, but reading.

Total: 2

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martelx -6th new title
52 Dune - Frank Herbert - Not yet.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons -7th new title
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen -Own, will read.
55 A Suitable Boy - 7th New Title.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - 8th new title. Sounds fun.
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -Not yet.
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Not yet.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon - Sounds fun, but not yet.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Really want to!

Total: 0

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - * Pretty sure.
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - Not yet
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt -9th new Title
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold -10th new title.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas -Not yet
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - Not yet.
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy -11th new title. Obscure indeed. o.O
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding -Not yet.
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - Not yet, but have on order from the library. Refer to a coming post.
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville *Part of, got dozy.

Total: 1.5

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker -Not yet.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - *
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson -12th new title.
75 Ulysses - James Joyce -Not yet.
76 The Inferno – Dante - Not yet
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome -13th new title.
78 Germinal - Emile Zola -14th new title.
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray -Not yet
80 Possession - AS Byatt -Not yet.

Total: 2

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - *
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell -15th new title
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker -Not yet
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -Not yet.
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert -Not yet.
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -Not yet.
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White - *
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -Not yet.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -*Partially.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton -16th new title.

Total: 1.5

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad -Not yet.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -NOt yet.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks -17th new title.
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams - *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -18th new title.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute -19th New title.
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - *Partially
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare *
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - *
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -Not yet.

Total:2.5

So, with the several half books, I'm at 25. One quarter of the list and I'm supposed to be at 6. I've heard of over three quarters of the list, own several that I ahven't had time for and... have a new note to post. I have a couple of new goals. I will elaborate the next post.
Vix