October 1, 2007

Don't Read This Post

It's an annual thing here at IDTMI, so it's time to celebrate Banned Books Week.

There are so many freedoms that are utterly and totally integral to our free society here in America that it's hard to put any one above the others. We have to protect our rights to free speech, free assembly, face our accusors, and so many more. Heck, they each deserve at least a week every year where we focus on that one, so let's take Banned Books Week this year and celebrate all of our freedoms.

Get together, read books, speak seditious words, and accuse folks. Do it all.

But I digress...

In looking at the most challenged books of 2006, I can sadly say that I've only read one of them - Bluest Eye. I know that The Girl has mentioned a number of the books as ones that her library has in it - yeah, The Girl!

Go for it and pick up And Tango Makes Three.... It's a kids' book so it shouldn't take you long.

Skim back through your favorite passages in Harry Potter.

Read one of any of the dozens of classics that get challenged every year or any of the 100 most challenged books of the 90's.

I can proudly say that I've read - from the 100 list:
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • Of Mice and Men
  • Harry Potter
  • The Giver
  • A Wrinkle in Time
  • The Handmaid's Tale
  • The Bluest Eye
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
  • Flowers for Algernon
  • A Light in the Attic
  • Brave New World
  • James & the Giant Peach
  • The Anarchist Cookbook
  • Slaughterhouse Five (my all-time favorite book)
  • Lord of the Flies
  • Where Did I Come From?
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  • Where's Waldo?
  • Little Black Sambo
  • How to Eat Fried Worms
But it's not nearly enough.

Read.

Buy BBW paraphanalia.

Check an even bigger list of banned books.

Watch a slide show...


Enjoy the irony...

8 comments:

joey said...

seriously? to kill a mockingbird? how am i supposed to feel like a rebel BA with Atticus?!?

achilles3 said...

The Great Gatsby
The Catcher in the Rye
The Grapes of Wrath
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Lord of the Flies
1984
Lolita (JUST finished TODAY!)
Of Mice and Men
Catch-22
Brave New World
Heart of Darkness
Invisible Man
Native Son
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Slaughterhouse Five
For Whom the Bell Tolls
In Cold Blood
A Separate Peace
Rabbit, Run (Rabbit at Rest too)

I just had to see what I have read from that list! I can't believe what a treasure this represents to me.

Thanks ChemGuy!!!

achilles3 said...

and that 2nd clip must live on forever! i wish I could make it a perm staple/widget on my blog under the title:

"Yes...and there are more them!"

UGH!!!

andrew said...

you've read the anarchist cookbook? wow...i'm impressed. I didn't even ever really consider that a "book" (partially owing to the fact that I've only ever seen it in electronic form).

achilles3 said...

no I have not??? it's not on my list?
but I would like to!

andrew said...

it was on Mr. Dusch's list :)

PHSChemGuy said...

To Kill a Mockingbird is hardcore. Any book that people want to take out of the libraries is a classic that we have to fight for.

You can put the video at the top of your blog for a really long time, Lakes. When you post the post, change the date to sometime in 2015 or something.

I'm guessing, though, that you can find a widget to put that video in the right hand column easily enough.

I've totally read the Anarchist's Cookbook. Back when I was in school, the interweb hadn't made its way to the high school geeks, so a friend of mine ordered and shared the Cookbook. It had some neat stuff that I now know to be chemically dodgy. Not stuff I ever tried but certainly stuff I marveled at.

achilles3 said...

hmmm...i need to piece that together!