Tag: Banned Books

Banned Books Week 2024

This year read a banned book week falls on:
Sunday 2024 September 22 – Saturday 2024 September 28

Every year for the past 38 years the American Library Association sponsors Banned Books Week: The Freedom To Read

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community –- librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types –- in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.

The American Library Association maintains a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books by decade for your reading pleasure.

There is even a web site and a domain dedicated to Banned Books Week called BannedBooksWeek.org

Lastly here is a list of the Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2023:

All freedom and all progress is ultimately rooted in the free flow of ideas.

My Banned Book List

burning books

The American Library Association maintains a list of the Top 100 Banned Or Challenged Novels Of The 20th Century. Below is a list of those books that have been confirmed as being banned or challenged. The ones in bold are currently on the “Top 10 Challenged Books Of 2009”. The books in blue are books I have read so far.

What banned books have you read?

  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. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
  11. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  12. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  13. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  14. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  15. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  16. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  17. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  18. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  19. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  20. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  21. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  22. Native Son by Richard Wright
  23. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  24. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  25. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  26. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
  27. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  28. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  29. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
  30. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
  31. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
  32. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  33. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  34. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  35. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
  36. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
  37. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
  38. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
  39. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
  40. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
  41. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  42. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
  43. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  44. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
  45. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
  46. Rabbit, Run by John Updike