todller

Banned! The 20 books they didn’t want you to read

From Instagram poetry to Greek classics, the works of fiction that have caused uproar through history – and into the present

The banning of books, it would be easy to think, is a relic of less enlightened ages. The Catholic church, in a last spasm of rectitude, added Jean-Paul Sartre, Alberto Moravia and Simone de Beauvoir to its Index of Forbidden Books during the 1940s and 50s, but then abandoned the list, which had lasted four centuries, in 1966.

Public book burnings by Nazis or McCarthyites, too, might be assumed to be nothing more than a baleful warning from the past. Yet the burning of books still appears an irresistible act to some – even in the country with the strongest statutory protection of free speech, the United States. In 2019, students at Georgia Southern University burned copies of visiting Cuban-American author Jennine Capó Crucet’s Make Your Home Among Strangers, some shouting “Trump 2020!”. In 2022, the Nashville pastor Greg Locke held a public bonfire for “demonic” books, including the Harry Potter and Twilight series.

Censorship used to occur largely at the level of governments or other transnational authorities. It still does in authoritarian countries such as Iran and China, but western states generally liberalised in the mid-20th century. Yet a weaker form of censorship has long persisted within the American school system, where individual books are subject to “challenge” by parents who consider them inappropriate material for their children. Often, school boards will respond by removing those books from school libraries, in which case they have effectively been banned.

The phenomenon has accelerated in recent years. The machinery of school censorship in the US has also become significantly more corporate. According to the American Library Association’s analysis of its 2024 data, “the majority of book censorship attempts are now originating from organised movements. Pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members and administrators initiated 72% of demands to censor books in school and public libraries.” Between 2001 and 2020, such groups challenged an average of 46 titles per year. Last year, they challenged 4,190 titles in 12 months.

Donald Trump’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes in schools and universities has led some school districts in Texas and Florida to proactively remove shelf-fulls of potential offenders within the last 12 months. Earlier this year, meanwhile, a man went into a public library in Ohio, checked out a number of books on Jewish, Black and LGBTQ+ history, and burned them all. The caption to a video of the bonfire read: “We are cleansing our libraries of degenerate filth.” Joseph Goebbels would have approved.

Here, then, is a selection of other books that have been considered degenerate filth …

✔ Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Atwood’s 2003 post-apocalyptic fantasia, whose heroes smoke weed and watch very bad things on the internet before their everyday lives are swept away by a global pandemic, is among the most widely sanctioned by American schools. The particularly censorious Utah State Board of Education even bans pupils from carrying a copy into school to read in their personal time. All such perilous tomes, advises the board, must not be given away or resold but instead sent to a specified warehouse in a box clearly marked “sensitive materials”. Not to be outdone, in 2024 a Texas school district banned Oryx and Crake because it promoted “gender fluidity”.

✔ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling

The famous children’s books about witches and wizards might be more likely to attract opprobrium these days on the grounds of the author’s political opinions, but long before that, Potterphobes were trying to get the books off school shelves in the US on the grounds that they glorify the occult or actually “promote witchcraft”. They succeeded in a few cases, such as Zeeland, Michigan in 1999, and Nashville, Tennessee, in 2019. Which begs the question, can you promote something if it doesn’t exist?

✔ Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

The Indian-Canadian poet rose to fame on Instagram, and this collection of social media-friendly minimalist verse was initially self-published in 2014 before coming out commercially and going on to sell more than 11m copies. Popularity, however, is no defence against the literary‑prohibition complex, which in this case cited not Kaur’s refusal to employ upper-case letters but the fact that some of her poems explore themes of sexual assault. It was the joint-ninth most-banned book by US school districts in the 2022-23 school year and remains off limits in districts across eight states.

✔ The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Hosseini’s 2003 novel set in Afghanistan before the Soviet occupation and then under the Taliban, which has sold more than 8m copies worldwide, has long been among the most banned books in US school districts, for its depictions of homosexuality, violence, or inter-Afghan ethnic tensions. The 2007 film adaptation was banned in Afghanistan itself under the government of Hamid Karzai. The Kite Runner is now one of many books removed from shelves in schools run by the US Department of Defense pending a review announced in 2024 – a ban that chimes with Donald Trump’s targeting of DEI.

✔ Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Orwell’s story of totalitarian truth-twisting may have been partly inspired by his experience of working for the BBC, but the Soviets felt it was obviously aimed at them, and so the novel was banned in the USSR until 1988, along with homegrown masterworks such as Vasily Grossman’s second world war epic Life and Fate. But Orwell’s relevance has not since diminished: Russians protesting against the Ukraine war have been arrested for giving out free copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four, while it remains forbidden to mention the novel’s title on Chinese social media.

✔ The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

The man who stabbed Rushdie in 2022, in an attempt to fulfil the Iranian fatwa, said at his sentencing that the writer “wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.” Apparently trying to kill people doesn’t count. Rushdie’s 1988 novel, which contains a dream-sequence riff on the life of the prophet Muhammad, was publicly burned in Bolton and Bradford, and banned in many countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Venezuela. In India, though, the original banning order seems to have been lost, leading a court to state in 2024 that it may no longer be valid.

✔ The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Morrison’s debut novel, a fable about a young Black girl in the US who wishes her eyes would turn blue so that she would be perceived as beautiful, remains surprisingly controversial for a book that was published 55 years ago, coming in third on the American Library Association’s list of most frequently challenged books in 2024, and being banned in 29 school districts in the 2022-3 school year. Her later novel Beloved is almost as popular a target, proving that winning a Nobel prize in literature does not suffice to make your work suitable for teenagers.

✔ Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

This graphic novel about a young woman growing up during the Islamic revolution in Iran was originally published in French in 2000. It was banned (as the author had foreseen) in Iran and for a while in Lebanon, but controversy struck when it was banned by the public schools of Chicago in 2013. That decision was later reversed, but Persepolis continues to be challenged and banned in states including, in 2023 and 24, Alaska, Iowa and Wisconsin. Such bans usually cite the book’s “graphic language and images” (a graphic novel is indeed likely to contain graphic images), though one complaining parent wrote to her Illinois school board to ask “why a book about Muslims was assigned on September 11”.

✔ China Dream by Ma Jian

If you wanted to curry favour with the Chinese Communist party, you probably wouldn’t use as your novel’s title a phrase taken from President Xi himself, which he uses to describe a “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”, or indeed have as narrator an ambitious provincial political operative whose job is, as Ma has explained, “to suppress memories of the past and control speech in the present”. This 2018 novel is of course banned in China, as all Ma’s work has been since 1987, but it was the first that no Hong Kong publisher would touch, either. The party, he says, has “an army of censors”.

✔ Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The novel that made Nabokov’s fortune was first published in France in 1955, since no American publisher would risk it. Its English-language publisher in France, Olympia Press, lost a lawsuit with the government the following year and the book was banned from sale. Meanwhile in Britain, it was illegal to import such “utter filth” and publication in the UK, as well as in Argentina and South Africa, was banned for several years: in New Zealand, it became legal only in 1964. For the New York Times in 1958 (when the French ban was lifted), Orville Prescott judged the novel “dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion”, and also “repulsive”. It is currently banned in three American school districts.

✔ Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

This 2007 novel about a school shooting has the dubious honour of currently being the most widely sanctioned book by school districts in the US, according to writers’ group PEN America, with 98 bans. Does suppressing fiction about school shootings reduce the number of actual school shootings? This remains to be demonstrated. In any case, the most commonly cited reason for deeming Picoult’s novel unsuitable for teenagers is, as she explained at the Hay festival last year, her use on page 313 of the word “erection”.

✔ Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence

The subject of the most celebrated obscenity trial of the 20th century, Lawrence’s pastoral romp was banned in Britain and other countries after its original private publication in 1928, though heavily expurgated versions were made available in the US and UK in 1932. Not until 1960 did a mainstream publisher, Penguin Books, attempt to bring out the full text, prompting a showdown with the government. “Is it a book you would have lying around in your own house?” asked the lead prosecutor on behalf of the Crown. “Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” The answer seemed to be yes, as Penguin won.

✔ Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

TV adaptations are usually good news for novels. After the 2017 Netflix adaptation of Asher’s YA teen-suicide novel hit the screens, the book was banned by school districts in eight US states. Some argued that the more sensationalised TV version was much more likely to have encouraged a seeming rash of real-life suicides in the following months. Banning the text, the author told a PBS interviewer, was likely to be counterproductive: “If we say issues of teen suicide, drinking, sex or sexual assaults are inappropriate, we’re telling teens who may identify with those themes that there isn’t a safe space for them.”

✔ Lysistrata by Aristophanes

Aristophanes’s 2,500-year-old comedy about women who go on sex strike in order to stop the Greek city states from fighting each other is plainly likely to sap the masculine spirit of any modern nation-state that emphasises marital virtue. Logical, then, that it should have been banned in its homeland under the Nazi occupation and then under the military junta that took over Greece in 1967. From 1873, meanwhile, it was also banned in the US under the Comstock laws that prohibited lewd or obscene material from being sent through the post, a ban that was successfully overturned only in 1954.

✔ The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Thomas’s much-admired YA novel about a Black teenager who sees her close friend shot by a police officer has, predictably, come high on the lists of books that are “most challenged” in American school districts since it was published in 2017. The various reasons include profanity, drug use and sexual references but also “racially insensitive language” – the latter a concern cited by the white superintendent of the Katy Independent School District in Texas, who personally pulled copies off the shelves. “You’re basically telling the kids … that their stories shouldn’t be told,” Thomas responded. “Well, I’m going to tell them even louder. Thanks for igniting the fire.”

✔ Fanny Hill by John Cleland

Cleland wrote this pioneering 18th-century tract of very bawdy fiction – ostensibly the “memoirs of a woman of pleasure” – while in debtors’ prison. Within a year of its publication his publishers had been hauled to court on suspicion of “corrupting the King’s subjects” and the book was officially withdrawn, though samizdat copies continued to circulate. In the early 19th century a pirated version was published in the US, leading to that publisher’s conviction in Massachusetts for printing something so “lewd and obscene”. Remarkably, police seized a new edition of the novel in London in the 1960s under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, and the unexpurgated Fanny was not legally revealed until 1970.

✔ The Witches by Roald Dahl

Dahl’s oeuvre has recently been the subject of enthusiastic Bowdlerisation by Puffin, which released politically corrected versions of his texts in 2023 that, among other things, removed the word “fat”. But The Witches (1983) had already long been the subject of complaints in American schools. While liberal critics thought it misogynist because Dahl writes that witches are always women, concerned American parents had it banned in Dallas, Oregon for promoting occultism, and in Dublin, Ohio on the curious grounds that it was “derogatory to children”.

✔ American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Ellis’s satirical masterpiece of men’s fashion, 1980s music pedantry and ultraviolence, having been dropped by its original publisher Simon & Schuster only three months before its publication date and then rescued by Vintage, has excited outrage in the censorially minded forever after. In the late 1990s Germany restricted sales to adults only, and for many years it was officially banned from sale in the state of Queensland, Australia, though in one of literary freedom’s smallest ever victories it can now be purchased shrink-wrapped, as long as you are over 18.

✔ The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Any author who appears twice on such a list must be doing something right. Since her most famous novel is about a future United States devolving into a repressive sexist theocracy, the routine rightwing attempts to remove it from schools in the present-day US do come across as a case of protesting too much. The Handmaid’s Tale has been removed from school libraries in at least 10 US states. After it was made unavailable to high-school students in Madison County, Virginia, in 2023, Atwood suggested that perhaps the censorious wonks hoped to get teenagers interested in sex again by making mentions of it in print forbidden – and so irresistible. It remains banned in 67 US school districts.

✔ Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut’s first bestseller, centring on the firebombing of Dresden (which he had witnessed first-hand), but also with a satirically freewheeling attitude to matters religious, sexual and cosmic, was something of a pioneer in the school-banning stakes. A mere three years after its 1969 publication, it was banned in schools in Oakland, Michigan for being, as a judge thought, “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar and anti-Christian”. In 1973, copies were burned in North Dakota because of its “obscene language”. In 2010 a college professor complained: “This is a book that contains so much profane language, it would make a sailor blush with shame.” In 2024, the novel was banned by school boards in Texas and Florida. So it goes.

Ledge House, Cornwall, Connecticut

Desai Chia Architecture,

UPDATED 28.07.13 (ONLY THE PICTURE WILL APPEAR ON YOUR BLOG)  NOTE: I have been informed that the writting will appear on your blog if you have a theme that shows the comments and captions on pictures. If your theme only displays the picture then it won’t appear. sorry for the trouble. 

BREAKFAST: almond butter chocolate chip baked oatmeal almond joy granola almond joy waffles apple cinnamon baked oatmeal apple cinnamon granola apple spice oatmeal pancakes apple stuffed french toast  baby step buns  banana bread oatmeal banana pancakes breakfast bread cranberry coconut granola dairy and gluten free pancakes double whole grain pancakes eggie veggie bake egg white crepes egg white veggie omelet english muffins fluffy canadian pancakes ginger bread granola ginger bread oatmeal ginger bread pancakes gluten free banana bread pancakes gluten free coconut pancakes granola healthy poptarts high protein breakfast cookies honey cloud pancakes honey nut breakfast cookies maple vanilla almond granola maple vanilla almond waffles oatmeal breakfast cookie oatmeal pancakes pancakes  peanut butter and jelly pancakes peanut butter banana breakfast cookies peanut butter cup granola peanut butter granola strawberry banana baked oatmeal strawberry banana waffles turkey breakfast sausage vegan banana strawberry oatmeal squares vegan and gluten free peach crisp vegan banana oatmeal waffles vegan crepes vegan nutella granola whole grain pancakes LUNCH: apple cinnamon bread asian chicken salad baked parmesan zucchini chips baked sweet potato fries with honey mustard dipping sauce baked zucchini fries bbq cauliflower bites bbq tuna fritters bread biscuits burmese shrimp and cucumber salad caribbean chicken salad coconut shrimp lettuce wraps corn fritters crispy eggplant with spicy tomato sauce crock pot baked beans dairy free potato salad easy bean salad fajitas garlic white bean basil hummus and homemade toasted pita chips grilled fish tacos grilled zucchini pizza hawaian chicken kabobs healthy french fries margherita pizza marinated vegetable salad portobello mushroom fries quinoa tortilla rustic vegan pizza skinny tuna melt  soft pretzels spinach and wild rice salad sushi sushi salad sweet potato chips taco salad tortilla chips tuna salad vegan avocado stuffed with quinoa salad vegan falafel vegetarian sandwiches vegetarian sloppy joes whole wheat and honey pizza crust wild rice and mushroom salad wild rice, spinach and avocado salad DINNER: acorn squash and black bean quesidillas  baked basil zucchini baked macaroni and cheese baked salmon baked squash baked turkey burgers balsamic grilled summer vegetables with basil quinoa salad bbq lime and mango turkey bbq rosemary sweet potato black bean burrito black beans and rice black bean veggie burgers broccoli and sundried tomato pasta chicken, avocado salad chicken nuggets chick pea burgers citrus grilled chicken dinner rolls farmers market salad farro salad with roasted mushrooms and parmesan fried rice with cashews garlic and lime shrimp garlic and parmesan turkey meatballs garlic and rosemary chicken garlic roasted red potato wedges gnocchi grilled shrimp with garlic and cilantro grilled tuna and couscous salad healthy chicken parmesan wraps healthy stuffed mushrooms mexican twice baked potatoes moroccan apricot chicken tenders mushroom pizza with caramalised onions oven fried eggplant peanut noodle stir fry pecan crusted dover sole pineapple pork kebobs pork fried rice portobello musroom pizzas red lentil cauliflower burger roasted rosemary root vegetables roasted vegetable salad with feta and chickpeas sauteed garlic and tomato lentil salad seasoned potato wedges slow cooker meatloaf slow cooker pineapple chicken verde  slow cooker pulled pork sandwiches slow cooker rosemary chicken  slow cooker two bean chicken slow roasted vegetables southwestern quinoa pasta salad sticky rice thai spiced bbq shrimp tuna stuffed zucchini vegan chick pea casserole vegan corn bread vegan lasagna vegan mac and cheese veggie lasagna zucchini sticks DESERT:  3 ingredient peanut butter ice cream 5 minute banana ice cream apple pie baked apple banana almond and chocolate ice cream banana berry soft serve banana split cheesecake bites blueberries and cream popsicle blueberry-pomegranate ice lollies blueberry strawberry banana ice cream cake chocolate hazelnut ice cream chocolate mint cookie dough bites chocolate mousse chocolate pudding cinnamon vanilla almond butter banana pops clean eating nutella ice cream coconut almond fudge coconut truffles cookie dough ice cream creamy baked pears dairy-free fudgesicles fruity popsicles greek yogurt cupcakes greek yogurt thin mint cupcakes grilled peaches with gingersnaps healthy banana foster  healthy brownie  healthy key lime tarts  honey wholewheat chocolate chip banana bread mini protein cheesecake mocha banana ice cream no bake cookie dough bites no bake peanut butter nuggets nutella fudge pops paleo brownie cupcakes pecan pie peanut butter and chocolate ice cream peppermint meringues pina colada ice cream premium poached peaches raspberry nutella tarts raw carrot cake  raw tropical ice cream roasted maple papaya strawberry ice cream sweet potato pie  thick and fudgey brownies vanilla ice cream vegan and gluten free, peanut butter, caramel cheesecake  vegan and gluten free, peanut butter and chocolate chip banana  vegan nutella bites vegan strawberry scone tarts bread watermelon tart SNACKS: 88 healthy snacks under 100kcal 100% real fruit roll ups almond butter protein bars almond clif bars almond joy cookies almond joy energy bites almond joys  apple cupcakes  apple pie larabars apples peanut butter slices banana bites banana bread larabar bites banana chocolate chip donuts bbq roasted chickpeas berry oat cups candied pecans caramel chews caramel popcorn cauliflower popcorn chocolate bar chocolate chip balls chocolate chip cookie dough larabars chocolate chip cookies chocolate larabars cinnamon fruit kebobs cinnamon raisin peanut butter oat bran muffins clean eating peanut butter cups clean eating samoas coconut chocolate chip cookies coconut cream larabars coconut date bars coconut strawberry muffins cranberry coconut donuts cranberry filled ginger bread muffins cranberry pistachio energy bites cranberry thumbprint cookies crunchy granola bars dark chocolate covered coconut almond granola bars eggplant chips frozen banana bites frozen fruit pops frozen yogurt blackberries  frozen yogurt strawberriesfruity fun skewers ginger bread granola bars gluten free coconut cookies gluten free snickerdoodles grain free blondies grain free energy bites healthy chocolate chip cookies healthy coconut banana bread healthy ginger bread cookies healthy oatmeal cookies healthy peanut butter cookies healthy peanut butter oatmeal cookies healthy sugar cookies high protein energy bites homemade cliff bars kettle corn key lime larabars kind bars maple cinnamon roasted chickpeas meringue cookies  no bake healthy protein bars no bake nutella protein cookies nutella thumbprint cookies oatmeal, raisin, peanut butter balls peanut butter banana muffins peanut butter chocolate chip donuts peanut butter chocolate chip larabars peanut butter cookie dough bites peanut butter cookies peanut butter cups peanut butter granola bars pizza roll ups pumpkin seed power bars roasted chick peas  skinny coconut cupcakes strawberry and mango fruit roll up tropical popsicles vegan and gluten free quinoa and cranberry energy bars

1. Just do it.  Don’t wait until tomorrow or next week, or next month.  Do it today.  Run to the mailbox to get your mail, run to the end of the block, run with your dog until he goes to the bathroom and then run home.  Start today and never look back.

2. Don’t start out too fast.  This is a common mistake that new runners make.  You start out too fast, then feel exhausted, out of breath, and defeated.  We don’t want that, so start slow.  No, I mean really slow.  Slower than you think you need to.  If, after a while, you feel like you can pick up the pace, then great, go for it.  But, for now, pace yourself, you are in it for the long haul.

3. Get fitted for some good running shoes.  Find a running store and get fitted.  A good pair of running shoes will cost from $85-$120 but they are so worth it.  Take the time to get the right pair.  It will save you time, blisters, and injuries in the long run.  Here is a great resource for finding the right shoe.

4. Try not to get frustrated.  Even the most seasoned runners have a bad run.  If one day you have a terrible run, don’t give up, it happens to the best of us.  The next one will be better, I promise.

5. If you are running on the road, run against traffic, that way you see the cars and can get out of the way if they don’t see you.

6. Don’t compare yourself to others.  So what if tiny shorts lady can run a 7 minute pace.  You run at your pace and that’s that.  If you want to do speedwork when you have this running thing down, then by all means do it.  But do not compare yourself to others.  Running is individual.  Run for yourself, not for anyone else.

7. Listen to your body!Don’t push yourself….stop if you need to stop, slow down if you need to slow down, and eventually it will all come together and you too will feel that “Runner’s High” ;-)

8. Find what motivates you- whether it is getting faster or losing weight or going to new distances, set a goal and work towards it in small increments.”