A short list of banned books

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To Kill a Mockingbird*
The Hate U Give*
The Color Purple: A Novel*
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian*
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning*
The Catcher in the Rye*
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley*
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings*
The Lord Of The Rings Illustrated Edition*
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon Graphic Library)*
Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)*
The Handmaid’s Tale*
Hop on Pop (I Can Read It All By Myself)*
Lord of the Flies*
1984*
The Giver (Giver Quartet, 1)*
Lawn Boy*
The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition*
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone*
The Complete Maus*
Lolita*
The Glass Castle: A Memoir*
Fahrenheit 451*
Out of Darkness*
Critical Race Theory (Third Edition): An Introduction (Critical America, 20)*
And Tango Makes Three: Book and CD*
Assata An Autobiography*
The Kite Runner*
The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy*
The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War*
A Civic Biology: The Original 1914 Edition at the Heart of the “Scope’s Monkey Trial”*
The Bluest Eye*
Jack of Hearts (and other parts)*
All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto*
Impending Crisis of the South “Annotated”*
Animal Farm*

Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:

In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.

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15 thoughts on “A short list of banned books

  1. Oh dear they missed one – a story of rape, murder, genocide, impossibilities, racism writ large, and so much more evil. I refer of course to The Bible – definitely not safe for young unquestioning eyes.

    Greg add the missing U to my name please

    1. …racism writ large, and so much more evil…

      As the song goes, ‘Josh won the battle of Jericho, the battle of Jericho, the battle of Jericho and the walls came a tumbling down’. Except he didn’t as there is no archaeological evidence for a settlement with walls by that name.

      If it happened as the Bible tells it then it would have been genocide.

      Now ‘The Source’ by James A Michener is one fascinating novel

    1. I’d say all of the reasons given there are dumb — but some are really dumb. Like “confronting a topic that is ‘sensitive, controversial, and politically charged’ ” or “thought to promote an anti-police message.”

  2. I am not American .. based in Greece actually. So, am trying to understand if this list is tongue in cheek, or are these books really banned in the US??

    1. Every one of these books has been banned by somebody at some point in the US. By a state government, a school board, or something.

      The US per se as a federal entity generally does not ban books, but that’s only because the don’t have a department of book banning to do it, probably.

  3. Thank you Greg for providing me with a means of triggering a divorce, ordering more books, many intriguing ones on that list, quite a number I already have.

    ‘The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War’ is one that intrigues me. L B Johnson (What is it about Johnsons?), now there is one to explore further, not only Vietnam but the response to the murderous attack by Israeli air and maritime forces against the Sigint ship USS Liberty in 1967. Read more in, the Chapter ‘Blood’ of

    ‘Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency’
    by James Bamford | Apr 30, 2002

    https://www.amazon.com/Body-Secrets-Ultra-Secret-National-Security/dp/0385499086/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38P537RIY98G0&keywords=Body+of+Secrets&qid=1644688084&s=books&sprefix=body+of+secrets%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C183&sr=1-1

    1. Sorry Lionel. Here’s a summary.

      First recommending people read Rosa, about Rosa Parks, but the video gets removed because it’s been banned because reading about black people is decisive.
      He moves on to recommending And Tango Makes Three about a pair of male penguins who adopt and raise an egg but again the video is stopped and he reports that’s also banned because it includes sexual deviancy.
      Next he tries Hop On Pop to the same result as the first two. This is banned because it advocates against parents.
      He ends by recommending people read banned books (then a siren starts and he says “Oh shit, they’re coming” and runs off camera.

  4. I’ve been giving some attention to the longer list Matt Krause put together to bolster his run for Texas attorney general. I spent yesterday turning it back into a spreadsheet, the better to sort and research its titles. (It’s not quite 850 titles, by the way: several are listed twice, and where a book exists in both English and Spanish versions, both are included.)

    More relevant are some analyses of the list that came out last year.

    * https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/the-krause-banned-books-list/

    * https://bookriot.com/texas-book-ban-list/

    * https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/11/18/who-is-matt-krause-texas-lawmaker-who-launched-book-probe-has-other-jobs-that-illustrate-worldview/

    There’s one in the Houston Chronicle too, but that demands a subscription.

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