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Does anyone else also make a point of readign books which have been banned at one time?

From time to time when looking for new books to read I'll search out books which were at one time banned for one reason or another. That most books were banned because they affront religion is kind of motivating to make a poitn of reading them.

Feel free to mention any (banned) books you might recommend.

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snytiger6 9 May 28
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33 comments

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6

I banned myself from reading any religious books, so that's fair enough.

6

I was horrified to acquire vinyl records from certain countries where an individual track or one side has been scratched out by the censor. . . Chile and Argentina.

Shit I didn’t know that practice occurred!😱

@Geoffrey51 I was horrified also. From the days of the junta's.

@Geoffrey51 Some may also have been done people wishing to avoid censorship and ill treatment by self censoring as the junta's desires became known. I have just posted a delightful film from Argentina that has a story line much arising from these times - "Today I sort of branch out and share with you a 1988 movie that I am currently watching and ..."

I had never heard about this practice. I'd have been horrified too.

6

Banned books are the best books. From high school on, I have always sought out the ideas someone didn't want me to ever know about. I still get a thrill when I discover something. (I discovered Moses is widely considered legendary a few months ago! How could I never have come upon this before?)

6

Of course. Some of the before I knew they were banned.

RichE Level 5 May 28, 2019
6

I read a number of books as a kid that have since been banned.
I give them as gifts now. Even if I have to special order them.

6

If you are talking about books being banned by government, prohibited from being printed or distributed, with punishment prescribed for violation, then you will get my immediate attention and I might want to read that book.

If a school decides that a book is inappropriate for its library I’m not concerned. If a publisher refuses to publish a particular book that’s their right and I don’t care. I am not aggrieved.

I have banned television in its entirety from my house.

@TheInterlooper Copies seem available from various sources, printed in 1991. Is that the original version?

What is special about the book?

5

The only book I can remember being banned or an attempt was made to ban it was Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H.Lawrence. I tried reading it but it was too boring. A book which should be banned is "Fifty Shades of Grey" for crimes against literature.

i got a third of the way thro 50 shades and could stand no more. The writing made me cringe

5

Hee!hee!Hee! I admit to reading the church bulletin while at mass (as a teenager), the banned book list and headed to the Library first thing Monday.

My favorite was Peyton Place. 😊

what a fun and racy at the time book...yep...

@thinktwice that it was. 😊

Fantastic book

5

When I was younger I made it a point to see movies that were banned in my city. Because of that, I went to see "The Story of O" when I was 17. Didn't understand it at all, but it was.......... interesting.

5

Kurt Vonnegut mentioned that one of the main reasons cited for banning Slaughterhouse Five was something that actually happened to him as he was making his way out of Dresden to Allied lines. The quote in the fictional book was included verbatim.

"Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker!"

And Vonnegut noted that in 1944 the term "mother fucker" was still a novelty to most white Americans.

5

I have a minor in Library Science. When I was taking courses in collection development we had to study the banned book list. We were also trained on how to deal with a challenge to a book. It is amazing how many books are challenged in public and K-12 libraries each year. Usually it Xtian parents/groups that are the primary challengers.

Anything with magic or mysticism tend to get a challenge. The whole Harry Potter series really created an increase in challenges in the K-12 systems.

For some reason, Judy Blume books tend to get challenged frequently too.

Luckily, I have only worked in the higher education sector and there are rarely challenges to books on a college campus.

I couldn’t believe it when there was a call to ban HP. That series got so many non-readers actually reading!!! Crazy Christians

@Marcie1974 lol I banned it from my own list...just could not read it from a literary point of view...not my thing...lol...but yeah, it was banned for crazy reasons...

@thinktwice I forced myself to read the first 3 a few years ago but that was as much as I could take. And I have pretty low standards....I’m not saying I read the Twilight series....twice.....but.....

@Marcie1974 lol...I get it...uh, nobody better say anything bad about Twilight...them is fighting words...lol

@thinktwice
Coming from a monster enthusiast
Those ain’t vampires

@darthfaja oops...I didn't mean Twilight...I was thinking of the Hunger Games.....lol...I like dystopian novels

@thinktwice
Your honor is redeemed

@darthfaja Do you have a favorite monster book? I am making a summer reading list...so far, it is too full of non-fiction...I need to mix it up...

@thinktwice
IT...... so damn scary
But movies are really more my thing
Romero, Hammer

@darthfaja I could not sleep for a while without having the lights on...I really am afraid of clowns...I was scared by a clown when I was at a circus in Germany as a small child...I have to scroll by any clown pics on the internet...lol...

@thinktwice 🥺

@thinktwice I think the original Frankenstein was in interesting book. Th emovies pretty much made a mess of the story.

@thinktwice, @darthfaja I've never foiund Stephen king's books to be scary. The books of his I liked the most had no supernatural aspects at all. Still he wites in such a way that he is very aesy to read.

@snytiger6 I am always glad to read the book first...movies don't have enough time to go into character development or make their social agenda clear...they are meant more to entertain than to educate and inspire...Mary Shelley did it and much was lost in the movie...including the fact that she was a female writer in the time when women were not taken seriously...

@snytiger6 The scariest books to me are the ones dealing with real people who have committed crimes...Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, still haunts me...

@snytiger6 except we are the monsters not the monster

@snytiger6 yes, love Steven King. I find his work more psychological than horror which is why the film adaptations never do him justice apart from Shawshank and Stand By Me. Interestingly, I read in a biography that he was pretty pissed off with Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ due to the casting of Jack Nicholson. He said that Nicholson seemed pretty manic from the outset which defeated the object of the book which was to show the gradual decline into insanity prompted by the house.

5

I have a lanyard I got at a book fair that says I’m With the Banned. Meaning banned books. But it sounds like I’m with the band 🤟 I thought that was super clever and bought it

awesome...it will help weed out the stupid for you in advance...great idea!

@thinktwice I also got one that says read but it’s like the AC/DC logo. RE⚡️AD

@Marcie1974 oh oh oh...I love AC/DC as well so that would be perfect! lol

@thinktwice I don’t actually care for the band but again...it was clever. And some people think reading is dorky 👩🎤🤟 It’s metal AF

4

Tried reading Catcher in the Rye, but couldn't get into it.
Not banned, but I did work my way through Dante's Inferno, only to learn that it was more a reflection of Alleghieri's take on local politics of that time.
Twain's family tried to halt publication of Letters From Earth, which made it all the more enticing. to me.

I think banning a book only imbues it with mystique, making people want to read it more. As I recall, sales of Satanic Verses were boosted after it was banned in some countries.

The brilliant thing about Dante’s Divine Comedy is that it is packed full of people and events. There are some pretty crap translations around like Dorothy Sayers and Longfellow but top editions by Durling and also Singleton with his commentary being a University education in itself!

4

The banning of Spycatcher in the Thatcher era was brilliant. Banned in Britain but not everywhere else in the world. That really showed them. No one from Britain ever got to read that then!

On the subject of censorship the 88-94ish transmission ban of Sinn Fein and other NI political figures from TV or radio. Broadcasters got around the problem by over-dubbing their voices by actors. One of the more farcical decisions by Douglas Hurd (Home Secretary of the time)

And the banning of the song Give Ireland Back To The Irish by Wings. I’d like to think it was banned because it was a shite song but...

Thanks. I added "Spycatcher" to my reading list. I hve to admit, I hadn't thought about non-fiction books that were banned, Other than by Charles Darwin.

4

I read what I enjoy. I’ve never looked at a banned list before now. The link below I’ve read about 75% of the books listed, most of which were in high school.

These days my readings are strictly medical journals. The subsequent nature of my job.
The plot isn’t exciting and the endings are all the same.

I think some of it depends upon where you live as well. Not a ton gets banned in the rest of the country as I assume it does in the south.

4

I have read a lot of books that were controversial...but not sure any were actually banned...

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Scarlet Letter (required reading when I was in school and protested!)

1984

The Sun Also Rises

Clockwork Orange

Lord of the Flies

Chocolate War

etc.

Just because you read a book does not mean you ascribe to anything it says...it is just information for you to process on your own and to learn of other ideas and philosophies...

I read Mein Kampf, the Bible and the Quran just like any other literature...

I occasionally read religious texts, Bible, some buddhist writings, occasional hindu and moslem ... but never even seen a copy of mein kampf

@ShadowAmicus I read Carl Marx as well...and I have recordings of Hitler's speeches in German...he was a powerful speaker...I like reading about any topic except cooking...

@thinktwice ditto!

3

I only read what interests me. Usually non-fiction.

3

I was fond of MAD magazine as an adolescent. Then, I gravitated to Bob Crumb, and Gilbert Shelton. Along with that, I devoured Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao. Not to mention Bakunin, Proudhon,Rousseau, Voltaire,Reich, Machiavelli, von Clausewitz, and Darwin. My advice: Read EVERYTHING! In that way, you will develop a more holistic view of this round, round World you live in!

I agree but there is a lot of nonsense out there as well. There are quite a few reliable canonical lists around to go to. If you’ve got a shortcut to being guided toward the equivalent of Jane Austin over Jackie Collins in many genres it saves time and the angst of plodding through a chapter of unilluminating twaddle!!

3

no. i don't look up which books have been banned, when, why, or by whom. there would be a gazillion of them. sometimes i find out about such things as i go about my normal life, which involves a lot of research that could incidentally reveal such information. unless i have reason to be curious about a specific book, or about a specific banning entity, i don't go seeking these things. i have read books which, as it turns out, have indeed been banned, but not because they were banned. i read them because i was interested in them. if i was ever interested in a book and it turns out it was currently banned i might make an effort to read it, but i would be more likely to work toward unbanning it, whether or not i then read it.

g

3

I read what takes my fancy and don't worry about if it is banned or not, and I don't go out of my way to source banned books either. If I am meant to read a certain book it will happen.

3

Librarian listing of banned books...

[ala.org]

camne Level 7 May 28, 2019

oh thanks...a summer reading list of any I missed!

edited: read them all...ha ha ha...but I think I will read Updike again...I only got through the first Rabbit series...

2

Who bans books anyway, besides the Catholic church? I heard several years ago The DaVinci Code (the book suggests that Jesus had a wife and baby)was banned by somebody. That was probably the 1st entire book I ever read, and I was 60 years old then. I listen to audiobooks every day. Mostly non-fiction about Science, philosophy, and atheism.
One thing The DaVinci Code did was to get me incredibly interested in religion. I have spent 100s of hours reading, watching, and listening to books written by the Four Horsemen. I have watched hours on Youtube the religious vs god debates.debates. I read, listen, and watch a lot of science, particularly evolution, physics, chemistry. It's funny that reading one particular book can spark a huge change in your life.

2

Henty Miller

2

I was swept up in the romance that was Henry Miller and Anais Nin when I was young. Lady Chatterley's lover. Lolita,Kama Sutra. And when I was feeling less romantic/ horny it was Brave New World and Animal farm 1984. I think those were all banned at some time

2

I guess I never thought about it. On a similar note, some things should not be released. Like when wikileaks released how to put anthrax in a water supply.

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