My sister asks me: what banned books have I ever read?  

In no particular order:

  1. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
  2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
  3. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
  4. The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
  5. The Pigman, by Paul Zindel
  6. Harry Potter (Series), by J.K. Rowling
  7. A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstein
  8. Ordinary People, by Judith Guest
  9. American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis
  10. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
  11. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
  12. Native Son by Richard Wright
  13. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
  14. That Was Then, This is Now, by S.E. Hinton
  15. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinge
  16. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  17. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  19. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  20. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
  21. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  22. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  23. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  24. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  25. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  26. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  27. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  28. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
  29. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  30. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  31. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
  32. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
  33. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
  34. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
  35. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
  36. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

I read Gone with the Wind in the sixth grade, it took me all year. In Cold Blook took all of  the seventh grade. The Pigman got me through Junior High. I read almost everything that John Steinbeck wrote in my junior year in high school – I love Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men astounded me. But I can’t reread Steinbeck – it isn’t the same. Kurt Vonnegut got me through my late teens. On the Road was my manifesto in my early 20s. (I tried to read it recently and couldn’t figure out what I saw in it so I stopped, perferring my memories.) I didn’t like American Psycho, didn’t finish Naked Lunch and didn’t get Catcher in the Rye. Orwell made such an impression on me with Animal Farm and 1984. Both of which I read in the early 70′s. I still remember the visceral reaction that I had when I read the last peice of writing on the barn wall and 1984 terrified me. I didn’t think that I could live in that world. But it did not come to pass.

My mother was a librarian and I loved being in libraries. I’ve always read books. Always have owned them. Movies and television are not the same. I will always remember how utterly disappointed I was with the casting of Professor Snape in the Harry Potter movies. I love atlases. When I was in elementary school my mother worked in a college library and some days I would go to work with her and get lost in the stacks. Looking at books in foreign languages and poring over maps. Surfacing in time for lunch.

I will always read the book first. I will never kindle. I don’t listen to books on tape. I used to think that paperbacks were for wimps.

Long live the book.