Read a banned book this week

It's Banned Books Week.

Of the list on this page, I've read the following:

• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
  
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (partially read)
  
• Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
  
• Forever by Judy Blume
  
• Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
  
• My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
  
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
  
• A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
  
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  
• Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
  
• The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
  
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
  
• Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
  
• Blubber by Judy Blume
  
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (in my TBR pile)
  
• Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
  
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  
• Beloved by Toni Morrison
  
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
  
• The Pigman by Paul Zindel
  
• Deenie by Judy Blume
  
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  
• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
  
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  
• Cujo by Stephen King
  
• Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
  
• Fade by Robert Cormier
  
• The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney (does seeing the movie count?)
  
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  
• Carrie by Stephen King
  
• Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
  
• The Dead Zone by Stephen King
  
• Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
  
• Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
  
• How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell

When I was a teenager, I used to make it a point to read "banned" books. No one was going to tell me what to read. Granted, the library was rather small at my school, and most of the books I read on my own time from the town library. I can recall only one person at my school who read an alternate selection when the English teacher was reading a certain book. However, I don't recall what book it was. If I recall correctly, her parents objected to the book. *shrugs* They were conservative Baptists, and she wasn't in my class.

I remember reading "Crime and Punishment" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" in high school. Reading those two books awakened my love for classic literature and for Russian literature. I can't say I was too keen on the Shakespeare we read, though.

I like to think I was subversive, reading "Gone with the Wind" in sixth grade, and "The Color Purple" in eighth grade. That book of mine got passed around quite a bit. I was reading a lot on my own. I read "The Winds of War" in junior high as well. No one ever objected to the books I was reading or to the ones I was passing around to other students. My mom let me read anything and everything.

In fact, I was in college when a friend of mine told me that her parents objected to a particular book she borrowed from me. She had left the book lying on her bed and her mom saw the title. I guess the title "Hot Blood" plus the book's subject matter would bother certain types of people. ;)