Stolen from imhungery

List of the top 110 banned books. Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've read part of. Underline the ones you specifically want to read (at least some of). Read more. Convince others to read some.

( The bastards )

So it goes."
-- Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Brilliant novel. Absolutely brilliant.
The book captures the essence of a former soldier of World War II, named Billy, who witnessed the bombing of Dresden, Germany, leaving him in a traumatised and delirious state. To cope, Billy's imagination--consciously or subconsciously--fabricates ( Read more... )

Wandering through the forest ( Read more... )

...The principle of mass production at last applied to biology."
-- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
What use is the physical education program? Why must they force us students to take twenty credits, or fail high school?
They'll tell you it's for the sake of the increasingly lethargic youth, plagued by obesity. Somehow seventy minutes of " ( Read more... )

...who, with his shoulders shaking and his hands on his chest, moaned sometimes with sorrow and sometimes with a tenderness that seemed to melt his heart."
-- The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
A few days ago, I finished Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera, a brilliant mystery novel translated from French. The plot enraptured me like no other ( Read more... )

-- The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Mostly drizzling though sometimes pouring, the weather is not what I am used to, leading me to pout and demand that my precious sun be unveiled, right this instant. Curse the cold and all its accomplices; a mere sixty-five degrees will cause my teeth to chatter uncontrollably, despite the four layers I wear. I ( Read more... )

...whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it?"
--Thoreau
Sitting there, on the bench, surrounded by friends, yet not talking, simply sitting, thinking--I reached an acceptance of a new trait I was hoping to reverse: I feel extremely distant from my friends. I had noticed this ever since the end of winter break, but I ( Read more... )

( bold=read; italicised=partially read )

"Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern."
-- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
I hate Sparknotes. And Cliffnotes, Gradesaver, Pinkmonkey--all those disgusting condensations of great literature.
Do I really? No. I don't hate them in their entirety; I hate that students use them as a cheap ( Read more... )

Here's a funny story:
I aide for my former teacher from H British Literature from sophomore year, and it's progress report time--which means an insane amount of work for me to do. I have to print out grade reports for each of the kids, and they highlight errors; I fix them, then I return it to them. I'm supposed to stamp them--but I get too lazy ( Read more... )