Like anybody else, I am a sucker for a good list. My buddy Len and I have been going back and forth over the past year or so, mocking a Rolling Stone Magazine “Best Guitarists” list. It’s not that Len (who I would personally place on this list) and I think the people on R.S.’s roll call are not deserving it’s just constantly astounding to us who has been left off.
Then again, that’s Rolling Stone, what does that rag of a mag know about music?
Anyway, I unearthed this list in my feed today: 7 Banned books that everybody should read at least once (ipreferreading.com) and it’s fantastic. Not because books have been and continue to be banned (I’m completely against this!) but because the books that are listed are indeed great.
Included in the list above are:
Sold by Patricia McCormick
A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
So, once again, why the banning? You got me. With some books I can guess where a controversy might lie, again, not that I condone banning. And in the current climate people are all too ready to be triggered by words or through presentism, so banning comes quite easy it seems. But these titles? Man, you got me, and I think I am smarter than the average bear. The only thing I might offer, is that I was never all that impressed with the Anne Frank’s tome, seeing as she never wrote a sequel. What, the story wasn’t good enough for a follow up? Maybe even a trilogy? (I made this joke waiting in line at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and to my surprise, it didn’t go over so well. Some people, man).
As we have all seen, when something is banned (book, movie, painting) it makes people, who might not have normally gravitated to the thing, seek it out. So, in the end, banning has the opposite result than the banners intended. Or maybe the banners actually work for the publishing companies who put out these books that they are setting up to ban, secretly working to push people to seek these books out as they make a little made-up noise about them.
Questions for a bigger brain than mine surely.
Anyway, read any of the above books if you like. Read whatever you like. Just read, it will do you a world of good. And even if what you read bothers you, dare I say it, ‘triggers’ your sensibilities, realize that’s a good thing. Who wants to go around always agreeing with stuff, never been challenged or pissed off, hearing and seeing their own believes blown back at them…oh wait, most people want this. Sorry, I forgot. CNN, FOX, NPR, WABC, THE NEW YORK POST, THE WASHINGTON POST, PBS, FACEBOOB, X (TWITTER) all of these media outlets and more, would have no listeners or viewers if the public didn’t mostly just want to be comforted by having their beliefs blown back at them.
But I digress. If we don’t get to reading and reading pretty much everything, we can get our hands on, we could all end up like the folks in dear sweet Ray’s 451.
You’ve been warned.
