Banned books week - Day 6

I'm choosing to finish out the week with this. The irony factor makes it particularly appropriate. Have you ever read Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451? Why would someone want to ban it? Because it makes book banners look bad, perhaps?

In a futuristic Earth -- but not so far removed that we don't recognize or relate to it -- all books have been declared illegal. Our hero, Guy Montag, is a fireman. That doesn't mean he fights fires. Quite the opposite. Firemen burn books. Guy thinks nothing of it until the day he and his fellow firemen are called to the home of a woman who has a whole library hidden in her house. She chooses to burn to death among her books rather than to live without them. Guy is so struck by this extremity of emotion -- seeing as there is no passion of any kind in his own life -- that he swipes a book before it can be destroyed, just so he can read it and see what all the fuss is about. That's the beginning of his slide. His marriage, his job, his status as a free man. It's all lost and in its place is an underground network where people have become books.

I love Bradbury. I really do. This is one of his many masterpieces, IMO. The idea of books becoming illegal -- any and all books -- is too horrible for me to want to think about it. But I do, especially when I think about Farenheit 451. This story is a prime example of an all too possible future if we continue to allow people to ban books in any place for any reason. That's why this week is important. That's why it's important to remember during the other 51 weeks of every year that freedom of expression is one of the most important freedoms there is. And that's why it's so important that every book be out there on the shelves for anyone who wants to read it.

Banned books week - Day 5

I was going to end the week with this book because it's one of my all-time favourites, but instead I'm blogging about it today. It seems only fitting since it, too, starred Anthony Andrews when it was filmed for television in 1981.

It also starred Jeremy Irons and a lot of other amazing actors. But the cast isn't important. It's the characters that really matter. I read this one, for fun, for the first time when I was in middle school. I re-read it repeatedly for the next several years. Probably almost as often as I re-read The Lord of the Rings.

Brideshead Revisited started my love affair with Evelyn Waugh, King and Master of Irony. (Don't believe he deserves the title? Read The Loved One.) Brideshead Revisited really struck home to my adolescent self, even though I undoubtedly missed many of the nuances the first few times I read it. I read it again for the first time in something like 15-20 years this past summer and was reminded of everything I loved about it. The relationship of Charles and Sebastian. The way Charles tries so hard to protect Sebastian from his own family's well-meanning but horribly misguided "protection". How Charles's relationships with Sebastian and all of the Flytes changes over the years. There are few constants in the world, real or fictional, and Charles Ryder is the most constant of them all. It's one of the things I love about him. His beliefs are firm and unwavering, just like his affection for his friend. Maybe that's what drew me to him. From the very first time I read it, I could always relate to Charles. My own feelings tend to run towards the absolute, you know?

My friend who first turned me onto Brideshead Revisited had a teacher in high school, a priest, who called Charles his "favourite agnostic". I love that. It amuses me to this day. I guess you could say Charles is my favourite agnostic as well. Maybe that's why I keep re-reading the book.

Banned books week - Day 4

This time I'm not blogging about something I read for school. (Not that I read Phantom Tollbooth for school, either, now that I think about it. Anyway...) You'd expect it was for school. Maybe some heavy (or just pretentious) English Lit class from college or something, but you'd be mistaken. See, I read this one for fun. Remember that, okay? Because I'm going to tell you what it is and you're not going to believe me. Ready?

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott.

Yep. I read it for fun. I know. I'm a sick puppy. I have a good reason though. Want to hear it? Okay. Anthony Andrews. See, he was in the TV movie of Ivanhoe 1982. ::happy sigh:: I look at the cast now over on IMDb and I realize there were a load of amazing actors in that movie, but I only remember Anthony Andrews. When he didn't choose Lady Rowena (the Saxon, which would have pissed off the Norman lords) and instead chose Rebecca (the Jewish woman, which pissed off everyone - including Rebecca)... ::chuckle:: Loved it.

I didn't read the novel then. Gods no! Precious (and pretentious) as I was in 1982, I wasn't stupid enough to think I could actually read that book. I read it later. Maybe in the early 1990s. I'm not entirely sure. I thought I'd never make it through when I got to the multiple pages (3? 7? 20?) describing this Cardinal and his train of attendants and followers in complete detail all the way down to the two Saxon pig herders, but I slogged on and eventually got into and through it. Finished it and everything. And didn't throw it across the room. ;) It wasn't as good as watching Anthony Andrews on the telly, but it was still very enjoyable. (And wouldn't Sir Walter Scott be oh so pleased to hear it put that way. LOL. I console myself with the reassurance that if he could see Anthony Andrews in the role, Sir Walter would agree.)

Banned Books Week - Day 3

Today I pick D.H. Lawrence's book Sons and Lovers. I don't know why someone banned it unless they hated it even more than I did, and I just don't think that's possible. This is another one I read for school. It was the over-the-summer homework in preparation for AP English when I was a senior in high school. It's a novel version of D.H. Lawrence's life. Why he did it that way I don't know, but it doesn't really matter because the only books I've ever disliked as much as this one, I simply didn't finish reading. (Black Trillium and Crystal Singer come immediately to mind. Hated both. Didn't waste my time finishing them.) In the case of Sons and Lovers, however, it was for school and I dug the teacher and I didn't want to start my last year of high school off on the inevitable lazy note on which I knew it was destined to end. So I read it. Every fucking word. You know how I celebrated when I was done? I threw it across my parents' living room. Diagonally so it would have to fly farther. This is saying something. I treasure books. They're very important to me just in their very existence. The fact that I wanted to do physical harm to this innocent collection of pages tells you just how much I loathed what was printed on those pages.

Now here's the funny part. We started the year on this book. I expressed repeatedly and fairly articulately why and how much I hated it. It wasn't until late in the school year that I discovered that the teacher didn't believe I'd read it. How do I know? I was TA-ing for the registrar and the English teacher came in. The conversation got around to this horrible book, and I began, once again, to expound on its great horribleness. That's when I saw it. That sudden look of surprise and realization on his face. It was at that moment he understood that I had read it. Hell, if my points of argument were still in my head eight months later, I must have right? I still love the guy, but Duh! Could I possibly have hated it that much without reading it? No! Right then and there I told him in no uncertain terms that I had read every page of that piece of shit (And yes, that was my choice of wording at the time.) and it sucked!

So there you have it. Not all banned books are actually good books, but that still doesn't mean they should be banned. If one objects to a book, don't read it. Assuming, of course, you are given the choice. ;-P

Banned Books Week - Day 2

Today I pick that masterpiece of YA lit, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. To this day I can't think of leaping to conclusions without the concern of having to swim back. And many is the day I have found myself wasting time and thought that Tock would be very displeased with me but at least I'm not killing time, which would be far, far worse. The plays on words and the interpretations of common phrases are thoroughly brilliant and force the reader to think twice or indeed thrice about linguistic turns of phrase that we take for granted. So here's to Milo and Tock, the denizens of Dictionopolis, the stairway to infinity, the island of Conclusions, the awful Dynne, the Princesses Rhyme and Reason, and a magical Phantom Tollbooth.

Banned Books Week!

Greetings, all! It's ALA Banned Books Week and I thought it might be interesting to blog on a different banned book each day this week. I can't actually think of five off the top of my head--mostly because I can never remember what some idiot has banned in the past. I do know that Mark Twain's masterpiece Huckleberry Finn was banned at some point, though. (Hell, it was probably banned at several different times; ignorami exist in all generations, right? :-P )

I remember reading Huckleberry Finn in high school for junior year English and I remember enjoying it very much. Naturally we had to write a paper on it and I distinctly recall arguing the opinion that Huck was an example of a "pure human being". What that means, exactly, I couldn't tell you today. My memory of my teen-aged self is blessedly vague. There was something about humanist theory and naturalism and whothehellknows what else. I, of course, thought I was innovative and terribly clever. The teacher wasn't so impressed. Of course, she and I had a very shaky truce thing going on at the best of times that year, but that's neither here nor there. I liked the book and the fact that I got a C+ on the paper didn't bother me at all and I'm not still bitter about it. Nope. Not bitter in the least. ;-P

What banned books do you remember reading for school? or just for fun?

I'm going to go digging through lists of banned books too see what else I've read that I can blog about this week. Why don't you go out and find a banned book you've always wanted to read, and read it!