|
All about sharing and recommending new books for all us bookworms.
|
|
Invite friend
"What did you say?": Books About Reading, Writing, & Censorship
|
|
||||||
Books About Reading
The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs Just for the heck of it, one day A.J. Jacobs decided to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, all thirty-two volumes. Surprisingly his details about his adventure is quite amusing and he does share some very interesting tidbits from the EB. Or as Jon Stewart says: "The Know-It-All is a hilarious book and quite impressive achievement. I've always said, why doesn't someone put out a less complete version of the encyclopedia? Well done, A.J." Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi I know I have previously recommended this book in my Memorable Memoirs soapbox article but besides her memories about living in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, Nafisi offers amazingly insightful analysises on Lolita, The Great Gatsby, and Daisy Miller. I wish I could have had Nafisi as my Western Literature professor! ----------------------------------------------- Books About Writing & Grammar Eats, Shoots, & Leaves by Lynne Truss Would you expect an author, while writing about punctuation, to bemoan the fact that she never had babies with Aldus Mantitus the Elder (1450-1515), the man who invented the italic interface and printed the first semicolon? Or, that she has an obsession with Warner Brothers' Two Weeks Notice and how it is missing an apostrophe - and she really wants to add it in? You might not have expected it, but that is what you get with Lynne Truss's (or is it Truss' ?) Eats, Shoots & Leaves. I certainly didn't expect to snort loudly from laughing so hard while reading the book. And now for the joke that inspires the title. A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons. "Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wild-life manual and tosses it over his shoulder. "Well, I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots, and leaves." Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose "In this excellent guide, Prose explains exactly what she means by close reading, drawing attention to the brick and mortar of outstanding narratives: words, sentences, paragraphs, character, dialogue, details, and more. In the process, she does no less than escort readers to a heightened level of appreciation of great literature. Many will want to go to the shelves to read again, or for the first time, the books she discusses. And to aid them, she thoughtfully adds a list at the end: Books to Be Read Immediately." -From School Library Journal ----------------------------------------------- Books About Censorship Killed Cartoons: Casualties from the War on Free Expression, edited by David Wallace. I first learnt of this book from NPR (they were interviewing David Wallis) and I was instantly interested. A book full of cartoons that never ran in newspapers because people (editors) were too afraid that readers and/or advertisers would protest it? What really is fascinating besides seeing cartoons that you would have never seen otherwise is the accompanying text to each cartoon: either the cartoonist describes the evolution of its creation or the editorial describes why it was killed. Truthfully, some cartoons might make you think "Yeah, I can see why it didn't make the paper". But others will leave you baffled to the problem, which leads to the ultimate difficulty of censorship. Cartoon subjects included in Killed Cartoons range from sex, violence, 9-11, race, and everything else inbetween. I will now include one such "killed cartoon", an example of a comic that I understand why it wasn't printed (too soon after the attacks) but also find satirically clever.
Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers, edited by Judy Blume. A collection of original short stories written by authors whose works were challenged or banned in the past. Authors include Norma Fox Mazer, Julius Lester, Katherine Paterson, and Jacqueline Woodson. Sales went to benefit the National Coalition Against Censorship. And in respond to this last recommendation, below is a list of commonly challenged and banned books from American Libaries, as reported by the ALA. The ALA (American Library Association) dedicates a week every year to Banned Books but feel free to check out any of these any time and see what the hullabalu is all about. It truly is amazing to look at the list of Challenged Books and see which ones people have issue with. Titles in bold are the ones that REALLY surprise me (mostly because I have read and enjoyed them). The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 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. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman 10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger 11. The Giver by Lois Lowry 12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier 13. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris 14. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor 15. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine 16. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck 17. The Color Purple by Alice Walker 18. Sex by Madonna 19. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel 20. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson 21. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak 22. The Witches by Roald Dahl 23. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle 24. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein 25. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous 26. The Goats by Brock Cole 27. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard 28. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry 29. Final Exit by Derek Humphry 30. Blubber by Judy Blume 31. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam 32. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George 33. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane 34. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison 35. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras 36. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers 37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood 38. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton 39. The Pigman by Paul Zindel 40. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 41. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier 42. Deenie by Judy Blume 43. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes 44. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden 45. Beloved by Toni Morrison 46. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar 47. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz 48. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling 49. Cujo by Stephen King 50. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl 51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein 52. Ordinary People by Judith Guest 53. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis 54. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 55. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice) 56. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard 57. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole 58. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras 59. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell 60. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume 61. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy 62. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly 63. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher 64. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan 65. Fade by Robert Cormier 66. Guess What? by Mem Fox 67. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut 68. Lord of the Flies by William Golding 69. Native Son by Richard Wright 70. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday 71. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen 72. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer 73. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende 74. Jack by A.M. Homes 75. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge 76. Family Secrets by Norma Klein 77. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole 78. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya 79. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle 80. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney 81. Carrie by Stephen King 82. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison 85. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez 86. Private Parts by Howard Stern 87. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford 88. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene 89. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume 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. Jumper by Steven Gould 95. Christine by Stephen King 96. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene 97. That Was Then, This is Now by S.E. Hinton 98. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy 99. The Wish Giver by Bill Brittain 100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier |
|||||||
Share this Link
|
|
Join this Spot
The Handmaids' Tale should be on required reading lists, not banned... and To Kill a Mockingbird?
This list makes me want to go around randomly slapping people.
I love Robert Cormier. I've read Tunes for Bears to Dance To and After The First Death, both riveting reads by the way. I have never read The Chocolate War but I've heard about it, as other classmates read it for school, and apparantly they found it interesting enough to actually start discussing (and analyzing!) a book on the bus to school! And these were eighth graders who generally couldn't care less about literature. I say if it encourages that sort of interest in reading, let them read it!
Oh my gosh, the Wish Giver! This book was awesome! What's wrong with Of Mice and Men, seriously???
The Drowning of Stephen Jones is one of the saddest commentaries on homophobia I've ever read!
OK, I'll stop here, because if I go through every single book that I love that's on that list, this comment will be longer than your soapbox.
Reading Lolita in Tehran has been on my reading list for a while. I'll pick it up ASAP.
Sign In or join Fanpop to add your comment