Kirk has laid down the challenge. And tagged me.

He’s given us a list, in anticipation of Banned Books Week from September 27 to October 4, 2008, of the 100 books (and in some cases series) that were most frequently challenged as to whether they should be banned from our libraries here in the United States from 1990-2000. 

The challenge to bloggers? 

Count how many of the books on the list you’ve read, and then pick one you haven’t read before and read it during Banned Books Week and share your thoghts on the blog. 

 

First, here is his list. It’s 100 books, so yeah, it’s long.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

And now, the books on this list that I have already read, at some point or other.

1. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
4. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
7. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
8. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
9. Cujo by Stephen King
10. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
11. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
12. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
13. Carrie by Stephen King
14. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
15. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

So, those are the ones I’ve read from the list. Amusingly enough, many of the books that are famous for teens being made to read them in high school, such as Salingers’ The Catcher in the Rye, I never bothered to read. Literature. Pfah.

Any of those books that a teacher would tell a class “You really should read, it’s very powerful”, I blew off because it was obvious it was a book that was supposed to clue my little oblivious spoiled pampered butt into how hard other generations had it, or how terrible other people had suffered, or how good my life was, or how easy my life was. 

I grew up a stupid dirt poor white kid in downtown Miami, amidst gang violence and lots o’ fun. A subject I have written about and deleted at least three times in blog posts in the last year. It’s funny, I can never quite get any of it to sound cheerful. And since it is all past BS that doesn’t have anything to do with the now, I just delete ‘em.

But it always struck me that what the teachers thought I should read to clue ME in, said a lot about what they had never experienced in their own lives. I’m sure they were powerful revelations. When you are already quite familiar with dealing with your own crap, seeing how others deal with it can be an inspiration, but it’s not that powerful of a personal transformation. Of Mice and Men I sought out on my own, nobody told me to.

I was mostly more into books that inspired me to set goals to get OUT of my current environment, thank you very much. Or, to be perfectly honest, books that took me to places that helped me escape thinking about where I was day to day.

People call some books “escapist fantasy”, as if that’s a bad thing. To those people, may I humbly suggest the next time you are in a shitload of pain, that you tell the doctor that you are refusing all pain medication, because it is nobler for you to endure it stoicly, with your mind focused on the present. It’s good for you.

At the very least, I’LL be amused.

So, I read only a few books on the list. I’m positive that I should now pull the stick out of my butt and read The Catcher in the Rye, and some of the others. Childish reasons for being pissy at teachers no longer hold much weight, and a classic doesn’t become that way because it was shallow.

Well, maybe the Great Gatsby.

Most of what I read in school had less to do with schoolwork, and more about distracting myself.  I prowled the shelves of the public library in Miami, looking for anything to read to distract me, and I’d already burned through all the fiction, sci-fi and fantasy they had. Which in the ’70s wasn’t much.

Hey, a funny side note there… I never paid much attention to, or had any interest in, the names of those people that wrote books when I was very young, 8 to 11ish. I prowled the stacks of books, grabbed 8 to 12 at a time based on the covers and descriptions, and took them home. I’d return in a day or two for another stack.

Here I am, decades later, and I am still finding myself prowling the library, looking for books that sound interesting. And I’ll find myself reading a cover blurb, getting excited, taking the book home… and getting halfway through the book before realizing I’ve read it once before.

And every single time, it irritates the heck out of me that I literally make it halfway through the book before I realize, “Hey… I’ve read this before. Damn it!”

On the other hand, sometimes I’ll read one, realize it’s one I really liked, and take pleasure in knowing how to actually search for more books by the same author now.

One book of that nature, was Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, a book I had read a LONG time ago, and whose incredibly wierd concepts had long stayed with me.

Imagine my delight when, as an adult, I think to suddenly check Amazon to see if they had ever heard of this obscure childrens’ book from the late 1970s, and find that the writer, Daniel Pinkwater, had released it as well as three other books in a single volume.

Anarchist that I am, I bought a copy so my son could have his mind bent when he is old enough to read.

Anyway, let me get back to Kirk’s challenge.

I look at that list, and I laugh at the childish fears on display. The list says a lot to me about what people in this country are afraid of.

But the books they are targeting to fight against reveal their ignorance. What they should fear the most are those people that like to think, that like to study and learn and keep an open mind, and books that challenge them to look at the world around them in new ways, and a new perspective. 

Because those of us that think are the ones that can debate them from logic and use reasoned discourse to challenge the basis on which they want to shut down ideas and halt the spread of information based on their own limited world view.

No, the books they really need to try and ban are ones like Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, that, while completely light hearted and funny, also makes you see the world from a wildly different point of view… and gets under your skin, making you wonder about the world around you, and the hidden depths other people may have within them, the secret histories that have nothing to do with stereotypes (or the modern euphemism, profiling).

And better yet, they should be outraged that such a mentally challenging book made it’s way into the children’s section of a library. Score one for that procurer of books, whoever they were. Assuming it was vhosen on purpose, and wasn’t just a happy accident. Subversive, that’s what such books are. I love that word. Subversive. What a great word.

Another book that they should fear, that isn’t on the list, is the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. There’s a trilogy of books (I had the single bound volume of all three) that will seriously open your eyes to the world around you, and even as you read it, completely blowing the entire thing off as utter hogwash… the concepts will still linger for a long, long time. The Schrödingers Cat trilogy was okay, but for a single book, I thought Masks of the Illuminati was the best stand alone, and certainly the most fun.

So, I think there are lots of books they should add to the list, if they are going to target their true enemy… people who think for themselves, and the books that help them blow the cobwebs from their mental eyes.

But there is one book on that list that, just seeing it included there, honestly pisses me off.

Seeing that people have, not once by many times, tried to get that book banned from being read, would make me start to really, really get angry if I spent much time dwelling on it.

Flowers for Algernon.

Just thinking of someone trying to ban that book makes me dream idly of baseball bats and kneecaps. I kid you not.

You hear someone speak of a book that had a profound impact on their life, that they claim changed them in some way, and maybe you think, “Yeah, right”.

Let me take you back in time for a moment.

When I was but a child, a very small child, I lived in South Florida. I mentioned that I grew up dirt poor in Miami, but that was after my parents became divorced. Before that, my parents were still together, and we lived in a richer community, called Boca Raton.

We were certainly not rich, my father as I have said in the past was a police officer, and at that time was going to community college and working part time security jobs as well, desperately trying to make ends meet. But it was a rich community, and felt like one. It was not inner city gang violence and filth. Our apartment was very small, but clean and in a decent apartment complex with nice landscaping, located near a canal so we could look at the ducks.

I was a very, very young child, perhaps 6 years old.

We suddenly went on a trip up north, to Minnesota, because a member of my father’s family, my father’s uncle, was dying of cancer in a hospital bed, and my father had been called back to say goodbye before he died, and so that the great uncle could have a chance to see me. 

I knew very little of the significance of what was going on, but I grasped a surprisingly large part of what we were actually there for. We were spending very long days in hospital corridors, waiting on hard chairs for the brief moments that someone would be let inside a small dark room to stand near a very weak, very old, very frail man with lots of needles in him.

Most of my time was spent sitting alone on a hard chair, bored out of my mind, and depressed because everyone was sad and crying all the time.

My one source of distraction was this comic book someone had handed me, that was a Dracula comic, apparently from a time when there were still hardcore horror comics. It was very confusing, but I didn’t find it scary. Just… stupid, and I didn’t understand what was going on in the book, either. There was no action. 

I’m sure I whined to someone that I was bored and wanted something to read, because at some point someone came to the hospital for a visit, and had brought with them some books. One of them was a thin booklet of short stories, and it had rocket ships on the cover. Something that seemed quite appropriate for a young boy, I’d imagine. Laser beams and rocket ships and trips to the moon. Just the thing for a growing boy to lose himself in.

I read the short stories… and there was one story there, called Flowers for Algernon.

It wasn’t written like a story. It was more of a journal, kept by someone that was in a hospital himself. And he was relating a story about what happened to him, and to his friend mouse, on a daily basis.

I read that story, sitting there in that corridor, and when I finished I finally found myself able to cry. I will never forget that story, what it made me think about, about what it’s like to be able to think, to be able to understand, to struggle to understand what’s happening around you and just not get it, even though everyone else understands just fine, and you feel stupid, and you can try and try, but you just don’t know what’s going on. And it doesn’t matter how frustrated you get, because you just can’t get it. Not won’t, can’t.

I can sit here right now, and I’m instantly transported in my mind to that time and place, and the powerful feelings that book awoke in me.

I don’t care how trite it sounds, that short story taught a small boy a damn hard lesson about how precious, how genuinely precious it is to be able to learn, and to remember, and to understand what’s going on.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a kitty at the vet right now, getting his teeth cleaned and having one extracted due to kitty gingivitis, and I have not as of yet given any time to getting a PBeM post in gear for the day. If I don’t get cracking, it may not go until tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 10:50 am and is filed under Offtopic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.