Wrap-up:Banned Books/Freedom to Read Week

To clarify, Banned Books Week is a celebration of our Freedom to Read. You may have realized that the majority of books you find on "Banned Books" lists are readily available just about everywhere you shop for books. So what's with this BANNED business? Simply put, some people, sometimes, don't like what some other people have to say in their books, and so, a charge of inappropriateness might be leveled against those books. It's rare that such a "challenge" succeeds in an actual ban, but it may lead to regional restrictions about who should read what. For sensitive issues we often fall back on generic rules of thumb, such as a person's age. In any event, there are currently no books officially "banned" by the United States. See the American Library Association for more information.

Here's a list of books currently available at Bonnett's (in no particular order) which have been Challenged by attempts to Ban them, or which may be Banned in other countries, or may have been Banned in other times. We hope you'll have time to enjoy them all, and many more!:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Scarlet Letter
The Red Badge of Courage
Native Son
The Jungle
Leaves of Grass
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
In Cold Blood
Howl
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Gatsby
Gone With the Wind
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Fahrenheit 451
The Call of the Wild
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Color Purple
Beloved
Brave New World
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Captain Underpants (series)        #s 3 & 5
The Bluest Eye
Fifty Shade of Grey (series)        #s 1 & 2
The Hunger Games (series)        #s 1 & 2
BONE by Jeff Smith (graphic novels)    #3
Harry Potter (series)            all
Of Mice and Men
His Dark Materials (series)        all
Forever
Gossip Girl (series)            #s 5,6,8, & 9
Killing Mr. Griffen
Goosebumps (series)            a whole bunch
The Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Rings (series)        all
The Satanic Verses
Sons and Lovers
Sophie's Choice
Cat's Cradle
A Seperate Peace
Brideshead Revisited
Women in Love
The Naked and the Dead
Tropic of Cancer
Nickel and Dimed
Twilight (series)            all
My Sister's Keeper
Beloved
Bridge to Terabithia
Kaffir Boy
The Outsiders
James and the Giant Peach
American Psycho
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by Anne Rice    all
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Song of Solomon
Pillars of the Earth
Cujo
That Was Then, This is Now
The Things They Carried
The Lovely Bones
Grendel
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Pentagon Papers
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
All Quiet on the Western Front

Never Forget?

"Never Forget" has always seemed a bit flaccid to me. Never forget what? 

Never forget that all of us, everywhere, people around the world, lost a cultural touchstone, a dream, an icon. The massive number of victims make it likely that every American is within the proverbial six-degrees of separation from someone directly associated with the Pentagon, World Trade Center, or the passengers aboard the 4 planes abused by evil men on this day 13 years ago. 

As a society, it was very much like watching our own home sent to ruin; such was the cultural impression made by the Twin Towers. It's clear that these buildings gave a similar impression to others around the globe, which is part of the reason they were chosen as targets. 

New York might be the most storied city in human history. It's a place of dreams, failures, history, fable, and romance and those twin towers were as representative of all those things to the United States as the Eiffel Tower is for France, or the Sydney Opera House in Australia.

Never forget? Never forget what? Never forget anything; because even those of us who've never been to NYC felt as if we lost everything on 9/11. I'm here to tell you that the feeling of loss still exists, even with the new building, One WTC, standing there now. Never forget the day that changed everything.

This Spider-Man movie teaser was released prior to 9/11 for the Summer 2002 film

http://youtu.be/9-r7qymfa0Q