Very similar to the Film Addict link I posted last week, Book Addict is a website that makes it easy to show how you are The Best at reading books. You check off all the books you have read from the Goodreads list of the best books ever and you can then compare it to your friends. How many of the top books have you read? I’m only 24.2% film addict.
For my final posting during Banned Book Week, and with help from the American Library Association, I have put together a list of the 100 Most Banned & Challenged Books Of The Decade (with links to the books on Amazon).
1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
5. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
7. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
9. ttyl; ttfn; l8r g8r (series), by Myracle, Lauren
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
11. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
12. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
13. Captain Underpants (series), by Dav Pilkey
14. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
15. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
16. Forever, by Judy Blume
17. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
18. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
19. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
20. King and King, by Linda de Haan
21. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
22. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
23. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
24. In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak
25. Killing Mr. Griffen, by Lois Duncan
26. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
27. My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier
28. Bridge To Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
29. The Face on the Milk Carton, by Caroline B. Cooney
30. We All Fall Down, by Robert Cormier
31. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
32. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
33. Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson
34. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
35. Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison
36. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
37. It’s So Amazing, by Robie Harris
38. Arming America, by Michael Bellasiles
39. Kaffir Boy, by Mark Mathabane
40. Life is Funny, by E.R. Frank
41. Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher
42. The Fighting Ground, by Avi
43. Blubber, by Judy Blume
44. Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher
45. Crazy Lady, by Jane Leslie Conly
46. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
47. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, by George Beard
48. Rainbow Boys, by Alex Sanchez
49. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
50. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
51. Daughters of Eve, by Lois Duncan
52. The Great Gilly Hopkins, by Katherine Paterson
53. You Hear Me?, by Betsy Franco
54. The Facts Speak for Themselves, by Brock Cole
55. Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Green
56. When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester
57. Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
58. Fat Kid Rules the World, by K.L. Going
59. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
60. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
61. Draw Me A Star, by Eric Carle
62. The Stupids (series), by Harry Allard
63. The Terrorist, by Caroline B. Cooney
64. Mick Harte Was Here, by Barbara Park
65. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien
66. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor
67. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
68. Always Running, by Luis Rodriguez
69. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
70. Harris and Me, by Gary Paulsen
71. Junie B. Jones (series), by Barbara Park
72. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
73. What’s Happening to My Body Book, by Lynda Madaras
74. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
75. Anastasia (series), by Lois Lowry
76. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
77. Crazy: A Novel, by Benjamin Lebert
78. The Joy of Gay Sex, by Dr. Charles Silverstein
79. The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss
80. A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
81. Black Boy, by Richard Wright
82. Deal With It!, by Esther Drill
83. Detour for Emmy, by Marilyn Reynolds
84. So Far From the Bamboo Grove, by Yoko Watkins
85. Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, by Chris Crutcher
86. Cut, by Patricia McCormick
87. Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume
88. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
89. Friday Night Lights, by H.G. Bissenger
90. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle
91. Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
92. The Boy Who Lost His Face, by Louis Sachar
93. Bumps in the Night, by Harry Allard
94. Goosebumps (series), by R.L. Stine
95. Shade’s Children, by Garth Nix
96. Grendel, by John Gardner
97. The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende
98. I Saw Esau, by Iona Opte
99. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
100. America: A Novel, by E.R. Frank
These graphs below are based on figures are pulled from the American Library Associations “Challenge Database”, which currently has 10,676 book challenges on record. A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. An actual banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. Due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection.
You will notice that if you add up the numbers of challenges by reason or initiator, the total will be greater than 10,676. This is because many challenges have multiple reasons or initiators.
Banned books week is here again. Every year, there are hundreds of attempts to remove books from schools and libraries. Celebrate your freedom to read and right to choose your book during Banned Books Week, September 25th to October 2nd. For more information visit the American Library Association.
Last year during banned books week I posted the top 10 most challenged books for each year spanning 2001 to 2008. Below you is the most recently updated list of the top ten most banned books for 2009:
2009
Back in July, Fortune polled a number of executives to find out what’s on their summer reading list. They’re read everything from books about the financial crisis to tomes on history’s great leaders. Of course there are a number management self-help and how-do-I-run-this-damn-company? books, as well as a handful of fiction. The results of the poll are below:
Brad Alford, Chairman and CEO, Nestlé USA
Mary Erdoes, CEO, JP Morgan Asset Management
Jim O’Donnell, President, BMW
Marc Cenedella, founder and CEO, The Ladders
Alan Miller, CEO, Universal Health
Greg Sebasky, CEO, Philips Electronics North America
Lisa Stone, CEO, BlogHer
Tom Wilson, CEO, Allstate
Gilbert Harrison, Chairman, Financo, Inc.
George Barrett, CEO, Cardinal Health
Heath Golden, CEO, Hampshire Group
Christine Jacobs, CEO and President, Theragenics Corporation
Les Berglass, Chairman, Berglass and Associates
Jim Greenwood, CEO, Concentra
Stephen Wiehe, CEO, SciQuest
In a recent interview with Foreign Policy, Google CEO Eric Smit had an interesting answer when asked if there is a downside to hyper-information access?
I am worried about the decline of what I call deep reading. In other words, the sort of “here I am on the airplane, there’s no Internet connection, I am reading a book thoroughly” reading. You do less of that in a world where everything is a snippet, everything is an instant message, everything is an alert.
What is Eric Smit currently “deep” reading? Ghost Wars. If you have any interest in this subject you should read Nicolas Carr’s book: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Way back in March of 2007 I posted a link to a cartoon called “All My Friends Are Dead” by Avery Monsen & Jory John. Back then, the cartoon was posted for all to see for free on the web – the link has since been removed. However, the very funny cartoon (and well worth the link back in 2007) has recently turned into an 96 page hard cover book. Congrats guys!
Yesterday an animated gif below, consisting of a few pages from the book, became the most re-blogged thing (of all time!) on tumblr.
A few (one?) of the new interns at JP Morgan had the guts to email Jamie Dimon for a recommended reading list. And he actually emailed them back. The following is his list of recommended books “which includes a variety of business and history books.”
Business
The World is Flat
Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
Security Analysis – Classic 1940 Edition
The Intelligent Investor
Execution – The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Jack: Straight From the Gut
Sam Walton – Made in America
Double your Profits in 6 Months or Less
Built from Scratch
Only the Paranoid Survive
Built to Last
History Bio
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Autobiography of Ben Franklin
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
Eisenhower: Soldier and President
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Washington: The Indispensable Man
Lincoln
Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant
Jefferson
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
History Other
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future
The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Some so Poor
Dimon also attached a copy of his Syracuse commencement speech and a copy of a fake Bill Gates speech in the email.
Mark Bittman has another “101” recipe list out. This time it’s 101 Fast Recipes for Grilling.
These recipes are excellent for their simplicity and ease. You’re not going to open a restaurant or win any cooking contests with these recipes, but they they will satisfy your taste-buds, tummy, and busy schedule. Previous 101 lists from Bittman:
Simple Salads
Head Starts on the Day
Inspired Picnics [previously]
Simple Appetizers[previously]
Quick Meals (10 more) [previously]
If you enjoyed any of the recipes linked above, I have been told that Mark Bittman’s “How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes For Great Food” is a worthwhile cookbook.
While in drama the Classical Unity of Time prescribes that the action of a play is to take place during a single day, the novel more-often-than-not covers a much longer period of time. There are, however, some notable examples where the time narrated is only one day. The most prominent example is James Joyce’s Ulysses, a novel which in one way or another has influenced the genesis of other novels whose action takes place within 24 hours. Seeing as this is Bloomsday, I thought it was the perfect time to celebrate by publishing this list:
A special category can be established for novels told in retrospect (Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Graves’s Claudius novels, for instance), though such an exercise eventually comes to include so many first-person novels as to become too cumbersome to be of much use.
If you can think of any that I’m missing please let me know in the comments and I’ll be sure they get added
The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, Gilbert Adair
The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years, Chinghiz Aitmatov
Un dÃa en la vida, Manlio Argueta
The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker
Vox, Nicholson Baker
Windows on the World, Frédéric Beigbeder
Seize the Day, Saul Bellow
One Night @ the Call Centre, Chetan Bhagat
Children of the Day, Sandra Birdsell
Billiards at Half-Past Nine, Heinrich Böll
Twenty-four Hours, Louis Bromfield
The Da Vinci Code (excluding the epilogue), Dan Brown
Angels and Demons (excluding the epilogue), Dan Brown
Deception Point, Dan Brown
Digital Fortress, Dan Brown
The Art of the Engine Driver,Steven Carroll
Wise Children (excluding the narrator’s memories), Angela Carter
The Hours (three plots each taking one day), Michael Cunningham
Arlington Park, Rachel Cusk
Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo
Cold Dog Soup, Stephen Dobyns
Grado. Süße Nacht, Gustav Ernst
Death of a River Guide, Richard Flanagan
Party Going, Henry Green
Concluding, Henry Green
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid
No Directions, James Hanley
That He’d Remember the Same, Elina Hirvonen
A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood:
Ulysses, James Joyce
The Colorado Kid, Stephen King
Odd Thomas, Dean Koontz
Intimacy, Hanif Kureishi
Mr. Phillips, John Lanchester
Eleven, David Llewellyn
The British Museum Is Falling Down, David Lodge
Days, James Lovegrove
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
Saturday, Ian McEwan
This Town Will Never Let Us Go, Lawrence Miles
Bunny Lake Is Missing, Merriam Modell (writing as Evelyn Piper)
I Am Mary Dunne, Brian Moore
After Dark, Haruki Murakami
Several books in The Keys to the Kingdom series, Garth Nix
The Farmers Hotel, John O’Hara
From Nine to Nine, Leo Perutz
Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
Scarecrow (excluding the prologue and the epilogue), Matthew Reilly
Eleven Hours, Paullina Simons
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Light of Day, Graham Swift
Loaded, Christos Tsiolkas
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf
The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold
Breathing Lessons, Anne Taylor
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor
Injury Time, Catherine Aird
The Pigeon, Wendell M. Levi
The Poorhouse Fair, John Updike
Popcorn, Ben Elton
A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood
Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk
Tomorrow, Graham Swift
Travels in the Scriptorium, Paul Auster
Man in the Dark, Paul Auster
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
Run, Ann Patchett
Dear American Airlines, Jonathan Miles
The Floating Opera, John Barth
Room Temperature, Nicholson Baker
Embers, Sandor Marai
Restlessness, Aritha Van Herk
253, Geoff Ryman
The Rider, Tim Krabbe
The Following Story, Cees Nooteboom
Rapture, Susan Minot
Vertical Run, Joseph Garber
