Banned Books Week! September 24−October 1, 2011 Read One Today!

It's National Banned Books Week so I'm urging y'all to head your bookshelves, local library, or bookseller and read a banned book.

I'm gonna re-read Catcher in the Rye just for fun.  My ex teases me about it because he says I'm too shy about using the F-bomb but I love Salinger's book and thinks that's weird. Oh well.  I've never claimed to be anything but unpredictable. Besides, telling me that a book is banned is like waving a red flag in front of a bull -- I simply have to read it!  And I find some of the entries downright astounding.  It takes a really sick mind to find Wuthering Heights or Macbeth worthy of banning -- just my take. If anyone has such a mind, stop reading now and go find another blog to read.

So, do y'all want to join me in reading a banned book? Here's a list of banned and challenged books -- some of which will amaze or amuse you. Wuthering Heights? Puh-lease!!!! Have fun!

• 1984 - George Orwell
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) - Mark Twain
• Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
• Age of Reason - Thomas Paine
• Andersonville (1955) - MacKinlay Kantor
• Animal Farm - George Orwell
• Arabian Nights
• As I Lay Dying (1932) - William Faulkner
• Awakening - Kate Chopin
• Beloved - Toni Morrison
  
• Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
• Bless Me, Ultima - Rudolfo A. Anaya
• Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• Call of the Wild - Jack London
• Can Such Things Be? - Ambrose Bierce
• Candide - Voltaire
• Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
• Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
• Catcher in the Rye (1951) - J. D. Salinger
  
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
• Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau
• Color Purple - Alice Walker
• Confessions - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
• Decameron - Boccaccio
• Dubliners - James Joyce
• Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
• Fanny Hill - John Cleland
• Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
• Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
• Grapes of Wrath (1939) - John Steinbeck
• Hamlet - William Shakespeare
• Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
• House of Spirits - Isabel Allende
• Howl - Allen Ginsberg
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
• Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde
• Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
• King Lear - William Shakespeare
• Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
• Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
• Lolita (1955) - Vladimir Nabokov
• Lord of the Flies - William Golding
• Lysistrata - Aristophanes
• Macbeth - William Shakespeare
• Madame Bovary
• Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare
• Moll Flanders - Daniel Defoe
• Monk - Matthew Lewis
• Native Son - Richard Wright
• Nigger of the Narcissus - Joseph Conrad
• Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
• Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
• Origin of the Species - Charles Darwin
• Passage to India
• Portnoy's Complaint (1969) - Philip Roth
• Rights of Man - Thomas Paine
• Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
• Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Separate Peace - John Knowles
• Silas Marner - George Eliot
• Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
• Sons & Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• Tropic of Capricorn - Henry Miller
• Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare
• Ulysses - James Joyce
• Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
• Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Happy Blogging!!!!!

Kay

Random Sunday Thoughts

It's a sunny quiet Sunday and I'm more or less vegetating. Here are some thoughts I've had and things I've found in my travels around the 'Net.

* I sincerely hope that recent passage of the gay marriage bill in New York is just the beginning of a wave of the States' passing such bills -- especially here in Ohio -- and not because I have a stake in its passing but because it would be the right thing to do and another real slap at our idiot governor on top of our getting the referendum on SB7 on the ballot . Think maybe Kasich's a one term governor? My daughter said long ago that "Everyone is entitled to the 'wrongs' of marriage". That might explain why she isn't married.

* For you grannies out there, I tripped across this cool new site, Pottermore from J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. It sounds fascinating and will open in October but y'all can pre-register now here. Ms. Rowling talks about it:



I sent the link to my grandsons.

* I liked this Supreme Court cartoon that says a lot about where these bozos should be working after their decision this past week. We have the best judges money can buy.

* Here's a quiz I found at the AFL-CIO site. It's funny and sad all at once. I passed it.

Hope y'all are having a great day!!!!

Happy Blogging!!!!!!!!!

Kay

I Think Bill Is Right

This is a very funny, very true video on the mass firing of teachers in Rhode Island. Yeah, it's Bill Maher and yeah, he's irreverent and often over the top but this time he is so right. Education begins at home. The only thing he got wrong was that George W. Bush went to Yale -- not Harvard.



I know a lot of my readers are teachers and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts they will agree with Bill. I refused to teach after student teaching at a local high school because no one can teach anyone anything if they don't know how to sit down and listen. And that, my friends, starts at home. And yeah, there are some pretty awful teachers (who the unions protect) but most are okay and some are brilliant.

Let me know what you think.

Happy Blogging!!!!!

Kay