Banned Books

This past weekend, I managed to do some cleaning. Family was coming for Easter dinner, so I figured I'd at least tidy up a little.

There were piles of paper on the table and in various places around the house. Putting them in one main pile (now on the table), I glanced through them. Some of the stuff got thrown out. But among the keepers was a list of banned books that I'd printed up a while back, and it got me to thinking about, well, banned books. A tee-shirt carried by one of the progressive (read left wing) catalogs that arrive in my mail box with some regularity states "I read banned books." I really would like to buy it sometime, because I do tend to read banned books. Tell me what I can and can't read, and I'm likely to get a little cranky.

Anyway, the list got me thinking: Is there any one place to find a list of banned books? Of course, the answer is a resounding Yes. I know, you might very well be thinking, "You could Google up banned books," which is exactly what I did.

One list, put out by the American Library Association, gave a list of Banned and Challenged Classics. It has taken Radcliffe's Rival 100 Best Novels List and simply put on the ALA's site the classics that were banned and challenged. According to the site, "The titles not included may have been banned or challenged, but we have not received any reports on them. If you have information about the banning or challenging of these (or any) titles, please contact the Office for Intellectual Freedom."(1, 2; see below for links)

Curious, yet, as to what these banned classics are? Here's how I plan to do it: I will list Radcliffe's Rival 100 Best Novels List (found at http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/radcliffes-rival-100-best-novels-list/ and on the ALA's page), then put an asterisk (*) next to the books on this list that the ALA says have been banned and/or challenged, as well as boldface the banned/challenged titles. This way, you won't have to read through two lists. (Again, the ALA's banned/challenged list comes directly from the R.R. 100 Best Novels List.

Radcliffe's Rival 100 Best Novels List

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 Were 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. Tokias, 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 Willow, 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

How many of these have you read? I know I've read quite a few of the books on this list. I also know that there are many more books that have been banned over the years that are not on this list of classics. I've also read many of those "non-classics" that have been banned. Will I continue to do so? You'd better believe it! Will I read a book simply because it's been banned? Maybe. But a good book is a treasure, whether it's been banned or not.

So, if you're looking for another book to read (I'm hoping you're already on Goodreads.com), check out this list, find one you've been meaning to read, and get started. Happy reading!



1. The link for the quote, which was on the American Library Association's website, can be found at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics.

2. ALA's quote also has a clickable link to email the Office for Intellectual Freedom. That email address is oif@ala.org.