What Kind of Reader Are You – Conformist or Rebel?
By Gail P. (TinkerPirate)
Banned Book Week made me think about my reading habits. Me? Thinking? I know…dangerous! But, the questions remained…do I seek out new genres or stick with my favorites? Am I the first to check out new books or wait to see what everyone else is reading? Do I walk on the wild side or play it safe? Then, I wondered, how would I even figure it out.
That’s when I turned to my second favorite place on the internet…Facebook. I remembered taking a quiz about the books I’d read (100 Books to Read Before You Die). I sucked…I’ve only read 29 of the 100, but in my defense I have 2 more on Mt. TBR. So far, I am NOT a conformist…reading books that someone else thinks are GOOD. Maybe that’s not bad. Maybe I’m a rebel. After all, I am a pirate, right? I must be reading books that people think are BAD as in BAD for you to read as in challenged or banned or O-M-G burned. So I hit the Banned Book Week website.
Ahmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, I’m pitiful! Of the 26 books on the 100 Books list that have been banned, I’ve only read 10. Well, let’s check out the Banned Book Week site, there’s GOT to be books I’ve read…right? 2 more, that’s it??
12??? I’ve only read 12 books that someone else has thought was BAD…really? In desperation, I turned to Wikipedia…yeah, I was THAT desperate. BUT, I was able to add 13 MORE BAD books – thank goodness there are 7 books in the Harry Potter series!
But, I am going to take extra credit for reading 2 books that have actually been O-M-G BURNED and that brings me to 27!
I guess that means I’m just an average reader…and, you know what, that is just fine with me. Reading may be fundamental, but reading should also be FUN and, if I read what I want when I want and how I want, it is absolutely fun and relaxing.
In case you want to see how you stack up, here is the list of 100 Books (someone says you should) Read Before You Die:
| 1984 by George Orwell |
| Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain |
| The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho |
| Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll |
| All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren |
| All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy |
| The Ambassadors by Henry James |
| And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie |
| Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery |
| Beloved by Toni Morrison |
| Brave New World by Aldous Huxley |
| Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh |
| Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding |
| The Call of the Wild by Jack London |
| The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer |
| Catch-22 by Joseph Heller |
| The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger |
| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl |
| Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White |
| Cloud Atlas by David Mitchel |
| The Color Purple by Alice Walker |
| A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole |
| Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas |
| Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
| Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler |
| Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes |
| Dracula by Bram Stoker |
| Dune by Frank Herbert |
| The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe |
| Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury |
| A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry |
| Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin |
| The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing |
| Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell |
| The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford |
| The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck |
| Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon |
| Great Expectations by Charles Dickens |
| The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald |
| Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift |
| Hamlet by William Shakespeare |
| The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood |
| Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling |
| The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers |
| Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad |
| The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams |
| Howard’s End by E.M. Forster |
| In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust |
| Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison |
| Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë |
| The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini |
| Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| Life of Pi by Yann Martel |
| The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis |
| The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery |
| Little Women by Louisa M Alcott |
| Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov |
| Lord of the Flies by William Golding |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien |
| Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert |
| Main Street by Sinclair Lewis |
| The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett |
| Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden |
| Middlemarch by George Eliot |
| Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie |
| Moby Dick by Herman Melville |
| Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs |
| Native Son by Philip Pullman |
| Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman |
| The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway |
| On The Road by Jack Kerouac |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez |
| A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving |
| Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen |
| The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro |
| The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett |
| The Secret History by Donna Tartt |
| A Separate Peace by John Knowles |
| The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon |
| Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser |
| Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut |
| Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence |
| The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner |
| Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein |
| Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransom |
| The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger |
| To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee |
| To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf |
| A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute |
| Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller |
| Ulysses by James Joyce |
| Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry |
| War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy |
| Watership Down by Richard Adams |
| The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler |
| The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame |
| Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne |
| Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte |
| Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig |
And, here is the list of books from the Banned Book Week website that have been either challenged or banned:
| 1984 by George Orwell – Challenged |
| All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren – Challenged |
| An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser – Banned |
| Animal Farm by George Orwell – Banned |
| As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner – Banned |
| The Awakening by Kate Chopin – Banned |
| Beloved by Toni Morrison – Challenged |
| Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – Banned |
| Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh – Banned |
| The Call of the Wild by Jack London – Banned |
| Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut – Banned |
| Catch-22 by Joseph Heller – Banned |
| The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – Banned |
| A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess – Banned |
| The Color Purple by Alice Walker – Banned |
| A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway – O-M-G Burned |
| For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway – Declared non-mailable by the USPS |
| Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin – Challenged |
| Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell – |
| The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – O-M-G Burned |
| The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Challenged |
| In Cold Blood by Truman Capote – Banned |
| Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison – Banned |
| The Jungle by Upton Sinclair – Banned |
| Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence – Banned |
| Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – Banned |
| Lord of the Flies by William Golding – Challenged |
| The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien – O-M-G Burned |
| The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer – Banned |
| Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs – Challenged |
| Native Son by Philip Pullman – Banned |
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kelsey – Banned |
| Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck – Banned |
| Rabbit, Run by John Updike – Banned |
| The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie – O-M-G Burned |
| A Separate Peace by John Knowles – Challenged |
| Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut – Banned |
| Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison – Banned |
| Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence – Challenged |
| Sophie’s Choice by William Styron – Banned |
| The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway – O-M-G Burned |
| Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston – Challenged |
| To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – Banned |
| To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf – Challenged |
| Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller – Banned |
| Ulysses by James Joyce – O-M-G Burned |
| Women in Love by DH Lawrence – Banned |
All of the books – except for the one’s in bold – are currently available on PBS. As for the books in bold, pick one, buy it, read it, and then swap it! I’ve already ordered Cloud Atlas by David Mitchel.
Tags: Authors, Book Suggestions, Members
Thanks for the lists, Tink! I’ve only read 17 from the first list and 7 from the banned list (and I think all
7 of those were on both lists), though I do have several on my TBR.
I’ve got to admit that when I joined PBS I thought I ought to read more of the “Best books of all time”.
I went about finding the first 20 or so. A couple I was glad I read. Most, though, I was happier to pass
along. Obviously my opinion of “best” doesn’t match that of whoever made the list.
Does it count if I saw the movie? What’s crazy is that of the list of banned books, I read about 5 or so of them, and that was in SCHOOL! Back when I read them they were required reading.
Eileen!!! The movie comment cracked me up…I was trying to figure a way to work it it because my numbers would go up…but decided since this was banned book and banned movie week…I’d work within the rules…THIS time….
Ok so maybe I’m not such a conformist. I’ve read 31 on the first list and 18 on the second. Not great but not too bad.
33 on the first list, only 9 on the second. I’ve got some reading to do!
33 from the first list and 16 from the second.
30 from the first, but only about 7 from the second. The library I was at earlier this week had a different list of banned & challenged books. I’d read a lot more off that list. Now I wonder where their list came from…
The banned/challenged list came from Radcliff’s Rival 100 List.
I agree about there being too many lists. I’d read almost all of the banned books listed at Powell Books in Portland earlier this year.
18 from the first list 5 on the second. Yeah, I have a lot of catching up to do!