# Poll: What banned books did you read? (Carry-over from GD) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 9, 2003, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472 "2003-01-09T07:13:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/41 "2003-01-10T05:45:01Z")
Okay, stupid question time. What’s wrong with _A Light in the Attic_? For what it’s worth, some of those books I have read and absolutely hated. _The Catcher in the Rye_ (you know, I never understood this title, I always imagine some sort of _Field of Dreams_ knockoff), _Bless Me, Ultima_, _The Color Purple_, _Killing Mr. Griffin_, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/42 "2003-01-10T08:28:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zoggie \* > \*\*Wait, question…what’s upsetting about Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing? It struck me as pretty innocuous when I read it. Granted, though, it is pretty creepy to imagine what it’s like to get swallowed by a small and rather sticky child. But at the end, Peter does get his own dog. \*\* Naw, that part was fine. What bothered me was how unfairly Peter was treated by his parents. It’s been years since I read the book so I don’t remember much of it, but I do remember finishing it and thinking what horrible parents Peter had for their obvious favorism. The episode with Dribble, for example, felt wrong to me. When Fudge was in the hospital post-Dribblectomy, they dismissed his concern for his pet turtle (which may have been a little selfish but was also understandable) and made him feel guilty for it. I also couldn’t help but feel they got him the dog out of guilt. That kind of thing resonated more clearly with me (even though I’m an only child!) than anything in _Little Black Sambo_. _LBS_ was a fantasy story to me, so no matter what happened I knew it’d end with everything being okay. _ToaFGN_ was much closer to real life and it didn’t end on a truly happy note. ---
**Author:** ![Coil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Coil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coil)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/43 "2003-01-10T12:48:27Z")
Ok, as a non-american a lot of the books aren´t familiar to me but I found a handful. Books read in school (assigned reading for classes or books recommended by teachers): The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Lord of the Flies by William Golding The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger Books read outside of school (with parent approval, some where gifts from parents and other were books my parent read as well): Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Cujo by Stephen King Carrie by Stephen King The Dead Zone by Stephen King Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/44 "2003-01-10T14:43:46Z")
::scratches head, feels foreign:: These books are banned? Really? By who? Some government-official or just some :coughs diplomatically: typical US-organization the people who stick “explicit-lyrics” labels on cd’s? None of those books are in any way banned in Holland. A lot of them (Virgina Andrews, King) are labelled as “light reading” though. Kind of that you cannot be seen reading it as an intellectual without laughing sheepisly and claiming that you were too tired for “No Logo”. Anyway, a lot of those books, especially the older ones, are compulsive reading in our equavalent of highscool, 1-3 year. I read most of them… Do banned books get read more or less read? I would think that the "parental advisory"people should know by now that their efforts are countereffective. Sales of an labelled CD rocket. Do’nt they know this, are they so naive? Or are they just happy to see their opinion of the bad ways of the world confirmed? ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/45 "2003-01-10T15:32:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by masonite \* > \*_Blubber_, for example, is fairly emotional stuff, and I say that as a person who was not fat as a kid. People will fuss about anything that forces kids to really think - like the pain of a fat kid. I’m not surprised someone, somewhere, was terribly offended by every one of her titles that attempted to cover topics with an automatic emotional impact. Some people get freaked out easily. \*\* Just as an aside, I was always nauseated by Judy Blume books. I always thought that all her characters were snivelling wimps. I always started by empathizing with them (like the fat kid in **Blubber** , I was overweight myself) but by the end of the book, I kept shrieking at them to just shut up and _do_ something instead of just whining. I remember really wanting the kid in **Blubber** to fight back or get a gun or something\* I hated **Lord of the Flies** too: I thought Heinlein’s response book was much better ( **Tunnel in the Sky** ) **Maastricht** : Often these lists of “banned” books aren’t banned in the sense you mean (I have no idea about the OP’s list). There’s no single monolithic government entitity forbidding anyone to read these books. Some schools don’t want to buy them for their school libraries (which isn’t really “banned”) some schoolboards have chosen to spend limited dollars on one book rather than one of the ones listed (which isn’t really banned) and some schools have actually forbidden students to read these books (which, of course, is). Like the term “censorship”, the term “banned” is thrown around a lot more freely than it should be. Fenris \*remember, I was reading these when they were new. LONG before Columbine. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/46 "2003-01-10T17:33:09Z")
> [@](#): > > Maastricht: Often these lists of “banned” books aren’t banned in the sense you mean (I have no idea about the OP’s list). There’s no single monolithic government entitity forbidding anyone to read these books. Some schools don’t want to buy them for their school libraries (which isn’t really “banned”) some schoolboards have chosen to spend limited dollars on one book rather than one of the ones listed (which isn’t really banned) and some schools have actually forbidden students to read these books (which, of course, is). Thanks Fenris for the clarification. But would most schools wield the same list as mentioned in the OP? Is that list official in some way? Or would the list differ from school to school? When I thougt some more about it, Dutch schools do have a sort-of banned list. Actually, schools provide a long list of books that pupils can freely choose from for their Literature-classes. If a pupil would want to be examined about Virginia Andrews or Stephen King for Eng-Lit class, he would probably get told no. Actually, I do not see why. Many other books in the OP’s list are on the choose-from-list. On the Dutch-Lit-list there are many modern authors where the sex/drugs oozes from the pages. But somehow those writers managed to get culturally acceptable. The more I think about it, the less I understand why some writers in the Andrews/King category are accepted as literature and others are declared “pulp”. Any thoughts, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/47 "2003-01-11T06:13:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Maastricht \* > \*\*Thanks Fenris for the clarification. But would most schools wield the same list as mentioned in the OP? Is that list official in some way? Or would the list differ from school to school? \*\* Differ wildly from from school district to school district and even from school to school. While Colorado, even the rural areas tends to be very relaxed about what students read, there’s a case in Colorado (Boulder, where else?) where an idiot school superintendant (I think–maybe a school principal) had banned a student from doing a book report on The Book of Exodus from the Bible\*. His stated reason? It didn’t have a plot or protagonist and there was no cover illustration for the student to describe. :rolleyes: But idiots like that are the minority. Americans have generally resisted any sort of wide scale school control: the vast majority of decisions are on the local level so lunatics may interfere with local issues but I can’t think of **ANY** book that’s officially “banned”. Fenris ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/48 "2003-01-11T06:18:33Z")
Oops…to finish that last sentence: lunatics may interfere with local issues but I can’t think of ANY book that’s officially “banned” nationwide. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/49 "2003-01-11T06:36:18Z")
**Fenris** : The closest are some of the books banned by the over-active Supreme Court in the early part of last century, including “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” and “Ulysses.” Anyway, like I said earlier **Maastricht** , these books are not “banned” but have been “challenged” by some parent or group or something. There is no number or list of actual “banned” books on the website where the list comes from, and, based upon the evidence _they_ (the ALA) provided, I am hesitant to categorically state that any of these books have been actually banned. In the original GD thread I calculated that, according to the ALA’s numbers, you will have an average of 1 book removed from circulation every 10 years for every 17 schools in America. Not exactly a crises sweeping the nation, huh? ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/50 "2003-01-11T06:47:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by astorian \* > \*\*Now, I suppose it’s fun to sneer at “book burners,” but would one of the more (supposedly) enlightened people here care to > tell me why Madonna’s “Sex” and “The Joy of Gay Sex” belong in school libraries? \*\* AFAIK, _Sex_ was never placed in a school library and challenged. Its presence in **public** libraries was challenged, as exemplified by [this link](http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/library/news/nr20020920b.htm) and [this link](http://www.kypost.com/2001/sep/24/books092401.html). There was also a cached page about another **public** library in Plymouth District that refused to carry Madonna’s _Sex_. I doubt either of those books were acquisitioned for school libraries, and even if they were, I am almost certain neither of them were put in elementary school libraries. ---
**Author:** ![kung\_fu\_lola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f4b2a3/32.png) [@kung\_fu\_lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kung_fu_lola)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472/51 "2003-01-11T06:50:57Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by amarone \* > \*\* > Sex by Madonna (sorry. Well, maybe not read - looked at the pictures)_\* Woo, you missed out, **amarone**. There is this really hot story that takes place on the beach… _sigh_ 😉 Oh my, look at the time! ==zoom! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poll-what-banned-books-did-you-read-carry-over-from-gd/147472.md?page=2)