Google has an interesting blog post listing a bunch of banned books over the years: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/banned/. I can't believe how many of these books I read and liked. I'm not a huge fan of old books in general, but the books I've read on that list are some of my favorites. What's the connection? Why do they choose to ban my favorite Hemmingway novel, The Sun Also Rises, or my favorite Tony Morrison novel, Song of Solomon. Pretty much all the books on this list that I've read: To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, 1984, Brave New World, etc. really stand out as the best among books I was forced to read in school. (Except for Their Eyes are Watching God -- that book sucks). Why is all the stuff I hated like Shakespeare, some of the really bad Hemmingway, Melville, Jane Austin, that "Stranger in a Strange Land"...
I really can't figure out how they chose these books to ban. I mean why do you ban The Sun Also Rises as opposed to any other Hemmingway book? They're all a little sexist, a little racist, a little homophobic, etc. But I don't know. Is there something these books have in common that made me like them and the censors hate them? I can't figure out the pattern.
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