The Biblio Blogazine

As I mentioned earlier, there will be two weeks this year that are set aside to highlight the issue of banned and challenged books.

The first is being hosted by the Pelham Public Library, Fonthill, Ontario. To learn more about the challenge, please visit their blog: Fahrenheit 451: Freedom to Read.

The second will be held the last week in September by the ALA.

As I already have so much on my plate, I’m only committing to reading three banned/challenged books between Feb. 22 and Jun. 30. They are:

• The House of The Spirits by Isabel Allende
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
• Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Seeing as this is a challenge I try to do every year, I have decided to make this a perpetual personal challenge. I plan to keep an updated list at all times of banned/challenged books. The project will always be listed on my sidebar for future reference. Please feel free to bookmark it if you find it useful.

As a side note, here is a list of banned books I have already read throughout my life. I know it’s long, but if you read through it, you will see why I’ve made it. Who would’ve thought? (Books I’ve reviewed on this blog are linked).

• The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
• The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
• A Light In the Attic by Shel Silverstein
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (currently reading)
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Green
• A Time To Kill by John Grisham
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
• Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel
• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara

Be aware that the lists I use are for books challenged world wide, not simply in my home country, although the lists I refer to first are made up by Canadian and American libraries.

If you’d like to see why some of the above have been banned or challenged, please see this list compiled by the University of California, San Diego.

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kinsolver
• Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
  (Mass market paperback I read was 466 pages-in small print. Oh my aching eyeballs!)

To find out more regardint this challenge, please visit the official web site.

I have chosen to read six of the books Dewey reviewed. I know the challenge stated I could read five, however I couldn’t narrow it down that far. So six it is!

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• Nation by Terry Pratchett
• The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
• What I Was by Meg Rosoff
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker

To find out more about this challenge, please visit the official website.

LONG
Lucrezia Borgia by Sarah Bradford

FREE
The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith

DUSTY
Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells

USED
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

LETTER
The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
or
Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

STRANGE
Fledgling by Octavia Butler

COVER
Peony In Love by Lisa See

ALIVE or NOT
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

DISTANCE
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

For more information regarding this challenge, please visit the official 999 Challenge Blog.

Books listed in red are overlaps: 9 are allowed.
Thus instead of reading 81 books, I’ll be reading 72.

Historical Fiction

1. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
2. The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox
3. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
4. March by Geraldine Brooks
5. The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins
6. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
7. Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
8. The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland
9. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

On TBR Shelf > 6 Months

1. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
2. The Rock Orchard by Paula Wall
3. Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells
4. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
5. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
6. Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
7. The Known World by Edward P. Jones
8. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
9. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Award Winners

1. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides [2003 Pulitzer]
2. The Hours by Michael Cunningham [1999 Pulitzer]
3. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt [1997 Pulitzer for Biography or Autobiography]
4. Empire Falls by Richard Russon [2002 Pulitzer]
5. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz [2008 Pulitzer]
6. Independence Day by Richard Ford [1996 Pulitzer]
7. The Known World by Edward P. Jones [2004 Pulitzer]
8. Beloved by Toni Morrison [1988 Pulitzer]
9. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulz [1994 Pulitzer]

Fantasy, Horror, or Supernatural

1. Women of the Night by Various
2. Frankenstein by Marry Shelley
3. Fledgling by Octavia Butler
4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
5. The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
6. Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson
7. Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
8. Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
9. Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

Classics

1. My Antonia by Willa Cather
2. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
3. Billy Budd by Herman Melville
4. Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
6. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
7. Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Ann Porter
8. Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
9. Cloud, Castle, Lake by Vladimir Nabokov

On A Whim (List subject to change…a lot)

1. Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan
2. The Rule of Four by Caldwell and Thomason
3. The Jungle Law by Victoria Vinton
4. One True Thing by Anna Quindlen
5. East of the Mountains by David Guterson
6. Nation by Terry Pratchett
7. What I Was by Meg Rosoff
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
9. The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

Non-American Authors

1. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
2. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton
5. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
6. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
7. Quentin’s by Maeve Binchey
8. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue

Recommended Reads (LibraryThing, Bloggers, Friends, Family)

1. Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
2. The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
3. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
4. In The Woods by Tana French
5. Paper Towns by John Green
6. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Shaffer & Barrows
8. The Gravedigger’s Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
9. The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

On the 1001 Books Before You Die list

1. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
2. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
5. Atonement by Ian McEwan
6. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
7. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
8. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
9. The Color Purple by Alice Walker