Banned Books. Which one would you miss?

[oggbashan]

I was sent a link to This list of government-banned books

Some of the bans are very old and now rescinded. Some are still current.

Would you miss any of the books on this list? Would you add some to it?

Remember! Banning a book can increase its popularity.

Og

 

[bronzeage]

I don't think I would miss Dianetics.

 

[DorlaMoorehouse]

Many of the books on this list (such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) were ones I didn't read in high school anyway - not because they were banned, but because my English department seemed intent on boring us to tears. I read most of these at home - my mom was intent on me reading as many banned books as possible. Even if a book had been banned at my school, I would not have missed it, because my mom was intent on supplementing my literary education outside of school.

Most of the books on this list that I did read in school (like All Quiet on the Western Front) - well, I'd never suggest a book be banned, but I would suggest it be excised from the curriculum on the grounds of being boring and making high school all the more hellish.

Though I would miss Howl a heck of a lot if the obscenity charges had gone through. Well, I'm young enough that I might not have known it happened in the first place. But you know what I mean. Also, Madame Bovary. Beautiful novel.

 

[jomar]

Dick and Jane?

I propose banning the Twilight series as a statement on the basis I have seen the movies they spawned.

 

[oggbashan]

During WWII, Hitler's Mein Kampf was republished several times in English language editions and the original on the basis of 'know your enemy'.

It has never been banned in the UK.

Og

 

[djserani]

I'm ashamed to admit that there's a lot on there that I've never heard of and a lot more I've never read. Some of them classics. I have read a few of them and there are a number of them I keep wanting to read, and never quite get around to. One of these days...

As for banning, my favorite dictionary - and the only one we have - is the American Heritage dictionary, specifically because it's banned from a lot of places. I can't stand the thought of book banning and would go out of my way to use the ones that have been.

 

[ishtat]

Solifluction

I would be reluctant to censor anything but might make an exception for a book called Fluvial Aspects of Glacial Geomorphology by Leopold Wolman and Miller.

When I was an undergraduate student I did a year at a German university as part of the course. Just before Christmas I made a long trek across Germany and Northern France, the Channel and Southern England by train to home. On leaving my flat I grabbed the book I had chosen for the journey. Unfortunately it wasn't the book I had thought and when I opened it on the train I found I had Messers L,W, and M as company for the next twelve hours.

It is not an interesting book, though I did learn what solifluction is and that too is not as exciting as it sounds. It was a long journey.

 

[squarejohn]

I was sent a link to This list of government-banned books

Some of the bans are very old and now rescinded. Some are still current.

Would you miss any of the books on this list? Would you add some to it?

Remember! Banning a book can increase its popularity.

Og

I remember when the label "Banned in Boston" would guarantee a book bestseller status.

 

[bronzeage]

During WWII, Hitler's Mein Kampf was republished several times in English language editions and the original on the basis of 'know your enemy'.

It has never been banned in the UK.

Og

If the Nazis left us one positive legacy, it has to be their public book burnings. From that point forward, it no longer mattered how sincere and well intended book banner's motive might be. If they want to push the issue, they have to join the ranks of the Nazis and then explain how their cause is different.

It's hard to overcome that handicap.

 

[scouries]

QUOTE ogman Banned Books. Which one would you miss?

Perhaps a more interesting challenge would be to make a list of famous books that are banned on LITEROTICA due to the sites story posting rules. Here’s one:

Fanny Hill Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (popularly known as Fanny Hill) is an erotic novel by John Cleland first published in England in 1748. Written while the author was in debtor's prison in London, it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel." One of the most prosecuted and banned books in history, it has become a synonym for obscenity. - WIKIPEDIA

[size=+2]...My breasts, if it is not too bold a figure to call so two hard, firm, rising hillocks, that just began to shew themselves, or signify anything to the touch, employ'd and amus'd her hands a-while, till, slipping down lower, over a smooth track, she could just feel the soft silky down that had but a few months before put forth and garnish'd the mount-pleasant of those parts, and promised to spread a grateful shelter over the seat of the most exquisite sensation, and which had been, till that instant, the seat of the most insensible innocence. Her fingers play'd and strove to twine in the young tendrils of that moss, which nature has contrived at once for use and ornament.

http://briancarnold.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/20060503125350_avril_fanny_hill_08.jpg

But, not contented with these outer posts, she now attempts the main spot, and began to twitch, to insinuate,and at length to force an introduction of a finger into the quick itself, in such a manner, that had she not proceeded by insensible gradations that inflamed me beyond the power of modesty to oppose its resistance to their progress, I should have jump'd out of bed and cried for help against such strange assaults.[/size]

[size=+2]james r scouries esq.
Multiple A.I.R. AWARD winner[/size]

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Can't say that I'd miss any of them. Unfortunately, every time I was assigned a book (aside from Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw) in school, I found it interminable. Simply getting to the last page was a relief.

 

[R. Richard]

Dictionary of Modern Serbo-Croatian Language by Miloš Moskovljević

I actually agree with the banning of this book. The author has an incredible vocabulary, but no sense of plot at all.

 

[Belegon]

My personal choices for what I would miss betray my fondness for speculative fiction. I immediately noticed Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-four and Slaughterhouse Five.

As far as impact is considered, Uncle Tom's Cabin was huge. The novel personalized the experience of slavery for many in the northern U.S. who had never seen a black person. It is not too far-fetched to say that it at least hastened the arrival of the U.S. Civil War.

It most certainly swelled the ranks of the abolitionist movement of the time. Harriet Beecher Stowe was on the dias as one of the celebrants with Frederick Douglas the night the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. What a party that must have been.

 

[sr71plt]

I'd certainly miss George Orwell's books and the Diary of Ann Frank--and, yes, even Alice in Wonderland.

 

[_Lynn_]

I wouldn't miss any.

 

[scouries]

Of course this book would never be allowed here...

Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, later translated by the author into Russian and published in 1958 in New York. The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, middle-aged Humbert Humbert, who becomes obsessed and sexually involved with a 12-year-old girl named Dolores Haze. -WIKIPEDIA

http://www.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/13.Lolita_1955.jpg

[size=+2]Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.[/size]

[size=+2]james r scouries esq.
Multiple A.I.R. AWARD winner[/size]

 

[driphoney]

Literotica is a private business. They get to choose what to put on their metaphorical shelves or not. Just like any other store. In this case, people provide "product" for free and customers can read for free. The owners profit from the "vendors" who pay to decorate the "walls."

Since this is a free country, you are even allowed to go open your own private business to provide whatever service you feel is lacking elsewhere or might help you turn a profit (the main purpose for having a business.)

This is not the public square, this is not a school, this is not the federal government.

Why does this seem so hard for so many here to grasp? I don't get it.

 

[TE999]

A quick once-over of the list seems to indicate more books are banned for political commentary than obscenity...which makes these periodic calls for 'regulating' the internet really, really scary.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I notice they did not include Huckleberry Finn. I understand this book was banned by some schools because black people in MO were portrayed as slaves. Well, Duh!

I believe there was also a book named "The Bunny's Wedding," or something like that, banned in some southern schools. One of the bunnies getting married was white and the other was (horrors!) black. Don't worry, Cloudy, this was a long time ago.

Okay, it wasn't southern schools, but I weas on the right track:
The Rabbits' Wedding controversy
In 1958 Garth Williams wrote and illustrated a book that caused a small uproar: The Rabbits' Wedding. The book was removed from general circulation in Alabama's state library system because of its perceived theme of interracial love. The story was about a black rabbit marrying a white rabbit. "Such miscegenation, stated an editor in Orlando, was 'brainwashing . . . as soon as you pick up the book and open its pages you realize these rabbits are integrated.' The Montgomery Home News [a publication of the segregationist White Citizens' Council] added that the book was integrationist propaganda obviously aimed at children in their formative years."[5] About the controversy, Williams stated, "I was completely unaware that animals with white fur, such as white polar bears and white dogs and white rabbits, were considered blood relations of white beings. I was only aware that a white horse next to a black horse looks very picturesque." Williams said his story was not written for adults, who "will not understand it, because it is only about a soft furry love and has no hidden message of hate." [6]

 

[TE999]

I know you won't find such books as the original Grimm's Fairy Tales (talk about grim...and bloody), 'Little Black Sambo' (racist), the original 'Cinderella' (sexist...and bloody), Tom Sawyer (racist) and other 'classics' in many school libraries and not just a few public ones.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I know you won't find such books as the original Grimm's Fairy Tales (talk about grim...and bloody), 'Little Black Sambo' (racist), the original 'Cinderella' (sexist...and bloody), Tom Sawyer (racist) and other 'classics' in many school libraries and not just a few public ones.

I read "Little Black Sambo" about sixty years ago. As I remember, it was about a clever kid who tricked some tigers into chasing him and turning themselves into butter, which was then eaten on pancakes. There was nothing racist about the story, but there might have been about the illustrations.

I suppose some old fairy tales, such as Sleeping Beauty and Snow White were kind of sexist, but I didn't worry about that back then. I don't remember anything bloody in Cinderella, except the ugly stepsisters offering to cut off their toes to wear the glass slipper. I'm not referring to the Disney movies, I mean the old stories.

I can't help thinking that some comic strips, such as Dagwood & Blondie and Bringing up Father (Jiggs & Maggie) were more sexist than the fairy tales I mentioned, and so were a lot of TV sitcoms from the Fifties and Sixties.

I will never know why everything reverted to its previous state except that one slipper.

 

[xssve]

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.​

-- John Milton, Areopagitica

 

[R. Richard]

I know you won't find such books as the original Grimm's Fairy Tales (talk about grim...and bloody), 'Little Black Sambo' (racist), the original 'Cinderella' (sexist...and bloody), Tom Sawyer (racist) and other 'classics' in many school libraries and not just a few public ones.

The idea that Little Black Sambo is racist is a product of ignorance. Little black sambo was a resident of southern India. The people in southern India who work outside are as black as any African, but the people of southern India are Caucasians, as are the same people who live further to the North and who have much lighter skin color.

 

[TMNT_FAN]

I've never really seen the point of banning books.

 

[Boxlicker101]

The idea that Little Black Sambo is racist is a product of ignorance. Little black sambo was a resident of southern India. The people in southern India who work outside are as black as any African, but the people of southern India are Caucasians, as are the same people who live further to the North and who have much lighter skin color.

Not to mention the fact that, even if the story had been set in the Congo, with lions instead of tigers, there is nothing racist about the story of a clever boy outwitting a group of predators, each of whom wanted to eat him.