In the words of Isaac Asimov, “Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”. This is the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week so I thought I’d share some of my favorite banned books with you.
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10 of My Favorite Banned Books
Banned Books Week
“A vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people [of Afghanistan] have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence—forces that continue to threaten them even today.”—The New York Times Book Review
Voted America’s Best-Loved Novel in PBS’s The Great American Read
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep South—and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred.
A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Witty and poignant, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often cited as the preeminent “Great American Novel.” So join this willful vagabond as he sails down the Mighty Mississippi and discovers one thrilling adventure followed by another.
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Nickel and Dimed reveals low-rent America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity―a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich’s perspective and for a rare view of how “prosperity” looks from the bottom.
The Awakening a precursor of American modernist literature; it prefigures the works of American novelists such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and echoes the works of contemporaries such as Edith Wharton and Henry James.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic that will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read – or listen.
With sparing prose and a realistic account of war, Hemingway portrays the existential disillusionment of the Lost Generation in the postwar years.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
“The vivid story of a black family whose warm ties to each other and their land give them strength to defy rural Southern racism during the Depression. . . . Entirely through its own internal development, the novel shows the rich inner rewards of black pride, love, and independence despite the certainty of outer defeat.” —Booklist
Are any of these favorites of yours? What would you add to this list?
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Great list! I absolutely loved The Kite Runner and several others you listed. I’ll add some of my own favorites: The Handmaid’s Tale, The Glass Castle, The Diary of Anne Frank, any of Toni Morrison’s books, the Harry Potter series, The Outsiders and my favorite ironic choice Farenheit 451.