I'll go to hell, then
On one hand, I scored way better (over 20%) than usual for this sort of thing, but I'll be damned if I ever get so bored as to read Tom-not-Thomas Wolfe, or, god forbid, Ayn friggin' Rand. (And for that matter, you're On Notice, Updike.)
I too am impressed with the scope of the banning (if I am reading that list right? Surely Atlas Shrugged isn't on the hundred best, but if we're including banned books that just miss the century cut, then where the hell is Huck Finn?). I don't know if it counts that at least half of these were assigned reading at one point or another.
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
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
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
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
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15 comments:
That couple-few acres in Vermont is starting to look better and better, isn't Keif? I know an island in a sea of corn is.
Nothing like a good old-fashioned book-burning to rally the troops.
Great spot on Diane Rehm this morning. Some kid teaches himself physics in Malawi (I think) and builds a windmill out of garbage. If he can do that, surely I can raise chickens, for heaven's sake. He had nothing. And, mere months later, his village has electricity. What the heck am I whining about?
Here's a llink.
fine, fine, i'll succumb. though, stuff like the lord of the rings, where some looney in west buttfuck thought it was satanic, shouldn't really count. nor the stuff that was banned in 1920(ish) and since is widely available.
also, you haven't read catch 22? rectify that, post haste.
switters: Great link, that's nothing short of inspirational.
I see that someone came along and gave that kid a scholarship.
twif: I had it in my hands, like, ten years ago, but didn't take it home. I've forgotten why. (Oh yeah, and agreed. But you compare yourself against the list you have...)
K
for some reason, i've not read much faulker or hemmingway. not really sure why that is. well, beyond mostly reading SF and the occassional mystery, that is.
I hated Catch 22, twif.
I wonder if that's just because I'm superficial and stupid. Jury's still out on that one.
I think you're right about the scholarship, Keifus. Every once in awhile, justice is served. Cosmic tumblers falling into place, etc., and all that.
that's okay switters, i still respect you. taste is a matter of taste. personally, i think it's one of the funniest books written, but it does tap right into my sense of humor and appreciation of absurdity.
Faulkner verbose-brilliant, emphasizing the paralyzing weight of family and history. Hemingway is terse-brilliant, and kind of self-martyered tool. I always meant to read more Faulkner, but anticipating an investment, never did. (I am not sure I'd have such an issue with him now, though.) Interesting that he didn't get banned for all the racism he portrayed.
Oh hell, I've not been able to post here all day - my computer would hang up when I logged on to your site, and for a while I thought I was blocked! LOL! (Nothing like being paranoid!)
There are many books on there I haven't read ... I always hate admitting I've not read much Faulkner. I keep buying them, getting them, wanting to ...
I took a Hemingway class in school, and so I really enjoyed reading those - can we count them if they were required?
My favorite on there for just reading, though, was Ulysses. My husband loves the book. One summer in Camden, Maine we spent two weeks reading it aloud to each other every day ... while overlooking the harbor and interspersing it with lobster dinners and copious glasses of wine.
I was quite proud of my near-drunken soliloquy at the end! :) I highly recommend reading these aloud with someone ... really keeps it going.
That's also how I got through Gravity's Rainbow. Another of his favorites.
(Then I made him read The Iliad and The Odyssey. But they weren't banned and that's another age.)
Yeah, I can't see blocking people except in case of dire emergency, and even then, I'd have to learn how.
My wife has asked me to read to her now and then. It's kinda sweet, but mostly it helps her sleep. I never read Ulysses (will get to it right before QED...speaking of investment), other than snips of the last part, but for that, it sounds like the perfect note. Sounds like a fabulous vacation.
It is! We used to go to Camden for two weeks in July ... very nice break from the Florida heat!
The real problem with reading aloud from Joyce and Pynchon is that if there is anyone else around I get pretty embarrassed! The language can be pretty ... um ... graphic and while it bothers my husband not one whit it does make me uncomfortable to read it aloud.
Old vestiges of Catholic guilt, I'm sure. Reading from the great list of banned books that my parents used to keep taped up on the back of their bedroom door. As a child I always wondered if they really were worried that any of us were going to try to sneak "Lady Chatterly's Lover" past them, or if they thought we could get them to take us to "Midnight Cowboy."
But it was quite thrilling to stand there when they were out and we had a babysitter and just read through the names on the list.
I'm pretty sure I've read and seen them all by now - wretched thing that I am!
Hey Keifus - I ran across this blog and thought of you!!!
http://shelf-monkey.blogspot.com/2009/06/literary-contest-for-all-us-haters.html
Like I need another great blog about books I still don't have time to read!
But I am a sucker for contests! :)
I'm not so well-read as I'd like to believe...of the 100 listed here...only 16 books.
However. If seeing the movie (or PBS series) counts, I can add Brideshead Revisited and The Maltese Falcon.
Wow, I must be a cultured SOB. Big number here. I love this list. Clearly only the best titles, perhaps a bit daunting for the little people but my meat, brother. 'Course if you take out the ones I was forced to read by some cloistered academic, I'm only half-smart.
Yeah, with that considerationg, my apparent smartness might dip below 30% I think. But there's a bunch hear I keep wanting to get to.
(Maybe I could submit the last one to that contest.)
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