Memories Are Made of This

Last night, Mrs Falaise and I settled down in front of the TV to watch the first episode of the CBS remake of Hawaii Five-O which is now being shown in the UK.  We are both old enough to remember the original version from our childhoods and so were curious to see how we would feel about the new version.  As the familiar drum roll sounded, we both relaxed before joining in with the theme tune which, sensibly, has not been mucked about with.

The tune brings back a very vivid memory from my childhood.  When I was six, we were living in Yorkshire.  My father had just got a new job which required us to move down to the Home Counties and he had started the job before finding a house for us to move into.  This meant that he had to stay down south during the week, making the long drive back up the M1 on a Friday evening to spend the weekend with us.  As I hadn’t seen him all week, I would be allowed to stay up late to wait for him to arrive and when he did finally get home, there would always be a box of Airfix plastic soldiers for me as a present.  Before he arrived, however, I had to have my bath and be ready for bed and, each week, as I was soaking away, the strident tones of the Hawaii Five-O theme tune would drift up the stairs from the TV downstairs where my mother would be waiting for Dad to arrive.

For some reason, that image has stuck with me for thirty-five years and still comes back clearly whenever I hear that music.  It’s the same with certain foods, pictures and songs.  Some of them, and not necessarily the ones I like best, have become inextricably bound up with personal memories and experiences.  And, it’s also the same with books.  There are some which conjure up times of my life whenever I read them or even references to them. They aren’t necessarily good books or books I would want to re-read but they are important to me and will probably become even more so as I continue to age and begin to lose my marbles.  I’d like to share these with you in a series of occasional posts.

The first of these special books is Animal Farm by George Orwell.  I suppose I must have been about nine or ten, maybe eleven but no older than that.  I was certainly still at an age where Christmas Eve was a trial specifically created to torment me.  A good sleeper as a rule, it was the one night where I was guaranteed to have insomnia, where the light on the landing outside my bedroom would shine more brightly and where my bedclothes would be less comfortable than usual.  Finally I drifted off to sleep.  Only a few hours later, I woke again.  I can still feel the odd sensation of the hot radiator next to my bed and the contrasting cold draught from the window.  I know I shouldn’t have but I couldn’t help looking at my stocking which lay at the foot of my bed and which had filled up with presents during the short time I had been asleep.  The house was dark and silent.

I couldn’t wait and started to open the presents inside.  Fortunately, one of the first things to come out of the stocking was a torch, followed by a couple of now-forgotten items before my hand fell on the unmistakeable shape of a book.  I ripped the wrapping paper off it.  On the black front cover was a photograph of a large, pink pig and the title – Animal Farm.

Putting the rest of the stocking to one side, I opened the book and started to read, thinking I would just “do a few pages”.  Several hours later, totally enthralled, I had finished the whole thing in one clandestine, under the covers reading.

Now, I don’t claim to have been some kind of politically aware prodigy.  I didn’t understand that it was a detailed allegory of the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist state.  I didn’t realise that Old Major, Snowball and Napoleon were modelled on Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin respectively or that Boxer represented the proletariat.  I had no idea of Orwell's disillusionment with Stalin and Soviet Russia.  My father would explain all that to me later.  To me, it was simply a gripping story.  But I was aware of the hypocrisy of the pigs and how they had manipulated and exploited the rest of the animals through lies and propaganda.  I was upset at the treatment of Boxer and felt a chill of horror at the final scenes in the farm house (please note – desperately trying to avoid spoilers here).

I kept that paperback with me all the way through boarding school and university, increasingly tatty and covered in ink stains.  It’s gone now, lost at some point.  I still love Animal Farm and will read it again, at which point I will review it fully here but I will never forget the first time I read it……….or the strange looks I got the next day from my parents and grandparents when I spent most of Christmas Day yawning and being distinctly uninterested in proceedings.

2,595: Banned Book Challenge - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I have been suffering from a certain amount of blog ennui  recently.  My list of books to blog about  is growing inexorably , yet my will to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) has about as much strength as Gillian McKeith facing yet another bushtucker trial.  I don’t know whether this is a permanent problem or just a temporary blip – I’m hoping it’s the latter.  It’s probably not been helped by the fact that I have been quite busy, both at work and domestically, which has given my tendency to procrastinate ample scope to operate.

I actually have an alternative theory to explain my malaise.  I’m a little reluctant to give it an airing because it would appear it puts me in a distinct minority in the book world.  I am coming to believe that my “bloggers block” may be caused by the fact that I didn’t enjoy Fahrenheit 451 and am struggling to find anything interesting (or even uninteresting) to say about it.

I know it’s a modern classic.  I know it’s one of the great dystopian works.  I’m more than happy to agree that the central conceit of firemen causing fires by burning books is clever and that it raises important questions about the dumbing down of society and the ability of government to close down sources of dissent if the general population begins to lose its will to object.   And yet..........

I just didn’t enjoy it.  It didn’t hold my attention.  I didn’t find Guy Montag to be a sympathetic character.  The revelation that he has been stealing books for a year is a bit awkward too.  Why would he have been stealing them if he hadn’t wanted to read them?  And if he had, why is such a big issue made of his theft of the single book from the old woman whose house he and his team burn?

In general, although there were some well-drawn scenes, I found the plot to be more of a vehicle for his ideas and images, as opposed to a coherent and developed story.  Many of the characters were one-dimensional and, all in all, it won’t be a book I return to.

I know many people love the book.  I know it has remained in print since its first publication and that it has caused huge controversy as well as being an icon for campaigners against censorship.  I’m sorry.  I wish I’d liked it.  I wish I had been more impressed by it.  I didn’t and I wasn’t.  I’m sure it’s more a reflection on me but Fahrenheit 451 and I just didn’t gel.

Even the title irritated me.  Book paper burns at around 450 degrees Centigrade, not 451 degrees Fahrenheit.  

2,599: Banned Book Challenge - Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Before reading Metamorphosis, I had never read any Kafka.  I’d always had this vague idea that he’d be dark, gloomy and miserable and that his books would be thoroughly hard work.  How wrong I was.  At times, I found the descriptions of Gregor Samsa’s behaviour as he adapted to life as an insect and the reactions of his family to border on farce and I finished the novella (it’s too short to qualify as a novel) far too quickly.

Obviously, the themes of the story are far darker.  At its heart, Metamorphosis deals with alienation and transformation.  The most overt transformation is that of Gregor himself.  From the opening of the story, when he wakes up to find himself transformed into a cockroach-like insect, we track his physical deterioration and increasing estrangement from his family until, at the end, he succumbs to infection and neglect and dies.

Yet this is not the only transformation.  In the beginning, Gregor’s parents and sister are dependent upon his earnings as a salesman and one of his main concerns is how his transformation will affect their ability to live.  We gradually learn that, in fact, they have been taking advantage of him and have been able to save a reasonable sum of money whilst living off his wages.  They then, themselves, transform.  His parents and sister go out and find work and become self-sufficient again.  They find a smaller flat in which to live.  Eventually, after Gregor’s death, the story comes full circle as Mr and Mrs Samsa begin to see Gregor’s sister, Grete, in a new light and realise that she is becoming a woman.

As a corollary to the awakening of Gregor’s family, their love for and care of Gregor begins to diminish.  Grete had taken on the role of caretaker to him and had even tried leaving different foods out for him to discover how his tastes had changed as a result of his physical transformation.  As the story progresses, she begins to neglect him and he is eventually left alone in his room.  His father becomes enraged and tries to kill him, throwing an apple at him which gets embedded in his carapace and causes the infection that will contribute to his death.  His insectoid nature diminishes their love for him until his appearance in front of their  lodgers causes Grete to conclude that he is no longer Gregor, as Greogr would not have been so inconsiderate.

One of the other aspects of the story that really struck me was the lack of curiosity shown by any of the main characters about Gregor’s changed circumstances.  At no point does anyone, including Gregor, ask or wonder why or how his transformation happened.  Even Gregor gives up any idea of changing back very early on.  Everyone’s focus is on the practical implications of his change.  Gregor is constantly trying to work out how to live as an insect, whilst showing (a rather naïve) concern only for his family and how he can be considerate of them.  His family spend most of their time adapting to having to work for themselves and finding ways to conceal Gregor from their lodgers and visitors.  This was probably the oddest aspect of the story for me.  I suspect if I, or one of my nearest and dearest, had been changed into a cockroach, I would be giving some pretty serious thought to what had happened and what to do about it!

Metamorphosis was banned by both the Soviet and Nazi regimes.  It was banned in the Soviet Union for being both decadent and despairing.  I can’t quite work this one out.  I suppose it is a bit depressing in that it shows a family quickly ostracising and then denying one of its members within a very short space of time for having changed into something different and inconvenient.  This could be seen as portraying groups as intolerant and untrustworthy, something which would have been unpalatable to a collective-minded regime such as the Communists.  Having said that, the Soviets were keen on supplanting the family with the Party and so might have seen Metamorphosis as an attack on the family concept.  Furthermore, it is a bit strong to describe it as despairing.

Anyway, I am now a Kafka convert and am looking forward to reading more in future.

2,600: 1,001 Book/Banned Book challenges - Fiesta: the Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

One slightly odd conceit of mine is that I am convinced that if a writer compels me to finish reading his or her novel despite me disliking all of the main characters, then that writer must be, at the very least, good and maybe even great.  On that basis, Hemingway is a great writer and Fiesta: the Sun Also Rises is a great novel.

The main characters, with the exception of Romero, the Spanish bullfighter, are all part of the expatriate Anglo-American set who hung around Paris in the 1920s, drinking, pretending to be bohemian and having sex with each other.  Ultimately, they are all pretty unpalatable characters – Jake Barnes, the narrator, is an impotent drip who is deeply in love with Lady Brett Ashley, a selfish promiscuous drunk.  She has slept with Robert Cohn, a moody, self-obsessed writer who cannot let go of her, despite the fact that she is engaged to Mike Campbell, a drunken bankrupt who spends his time cadging money or trying to get free drinks.  Enter the beautiful young matador, Romero, during the fiesta in Pamplona, and the scene is set for excessive drinking, fisticuffs and arguments.

In my youth, I would probably have read this and wanted to be one of the young Americans, partying around Paris and Spain, drinking too much and generally acting as if there was no tomorrow.  Now, in my “middle years”, it just makes me a bit tired and the jaded cynicism of the characters grates on me.

It is saved by Hemingway’s style.  The book reads like a hard-boiled detective story by Chandler or Marlowe, all short, staccato sentences, sparse and lean.  There are no literary flourishes, no flowery adjectives or convoluted clauses.  The writing is deceptively simple and therein lies the rub.  Hemingway is simply masterful at conjuring up images from direct language and at building the tension as the fiesta approaches and the group begins to fall apart.

I have also discovered a new word........polysyndeton.  Yes, you read me correctly, polysyndeton.  Now, on the assumption that there are at least a couple of you out there who, like me, haven’t a clue about this word, it describes a literary technique whereby a writer uses multiple conjunctions in close succession, especially where they are grammatically unnecessary.  So, “I went to the bank and took out some cash but was robbed on the way out and so I went to the police station and reported it.” is a (pretty poor) use of polysyndeton.  And the point of this is that polysyndeton was used by Hemingway to raise the pace of his writing and to convey a sense of immediacy.  Although I suspect he wouldn’t have been able to pronounce it half the time, given that he was usually half-cut.

Anyway, back to Fiesta: the Sun Also Rises.  Unpleasant characters, atmospheric writing and Paris and Spain provide great backdrops to the action.  Apparently one of the great 20^th Century novels, it didn’t do huge amounts for me and I wouldn’t even class it as one of Hemingway’s best.  Which, I am told, puts me a distinct minority.

2,601:1,001 Book/Banned Book challenges - 1984 by George Orwell

Comparisons are often made between the Brave New World of Aldous Huxley and Orwell’s vision of the future in 1984.  Huxley created a world of softness, where emotions are muted and human passions, such as love and ambition, are smothered.  By a combination of conditioning and biophysical engineering (not genetic engineering, mind), the citizens of Huxley’s future are politically paralysed by material comfort and the encouragement of hedonistic pleasures.

Orwell’s world is much different.  The three mega-states of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia are in a perpetual state of war, with shifting alliances and geographical conflicts being the only signs of change.  Domestically, the Party, led by the possibly mythical Big Brother, crushes all opposition underfoot and is totalitarian in scope, seeking to control all aspects of life.  There is a telescreen in every room so that Big Brother’s thought police can spy on everyone at any time.

There are elements of 1984 that will be familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of the Soviet and Nazi regimes of the 1930s and 1940s.  Like the KGB, the thought police come in the dead of night and their victims simply disappear.  There is cult-like worship of Big Brother, an institutionalised distaste for sex and a huge propaganda machine, attempting to control the very thoughts of the people.

In purely literary terms, 1984 is not a great novel.  Its plot is straightforward:  Winston Smith, a minor Party official, commits a thought crime by beginning to write a diary.  From the very beginning, he knows that it is only a matter of time before he is caught and killed.  He meets Julia, another Party worker and they begin an affair.  They meet a more senior official, O’Brien, one of the Inner Party.  He lends them a book by Big Brother’s arch enemy, Goldstein, and enrols them into a secret resistance movement but, almost inevitably, he turns out to be part of the thought police and arrests them.  Under torture, including the infamous Room 101, Julia and Winston betray each other.  At the end of the novel, they see each other once more and exchange looks of hate for each other.  The final image of Winston is as a “non-person”, alive but excluded from society.  And yet, he realises he loves Big Brother, whose victory is complete.

The characterisation is not much better:  almost all of the main characters are shallow, mere ciphers for the ideas Orwell wants to explore.  In pure literary terms, Orwell wrote much better books than 1984.  Try Animal Farm, Down and out in London and Paris, Homage to Catalonia or any of his volumes of essays.  The importance of 1984 lies in its description of the results of totalitarianism and its call for us to resist it.  And at the core of it is what I believe to be Orwell’s core belief – that our best defence and most central value is the truth.  Winston once finds evidence of Big Brother’s fakery of history and this is an epiphany for him.  At the heart of 1984 is the way in which Big Brother and the party manipulate the truth by propaganda, by imposing a new language, shorn of beauty and subtlety and by rewriting history to be consistent with the present.

Oceania has a huge bureaucracy devoted to rewriting newspapers to make the past reflect the present, to persuading the people that they have never been at war with Eurasia despite the fact that Winston clearly remembers that they were.  The Bible may tell us that the truth shall set us free and Big Brother would agree.  So he makes sure that he creates the truth and that the truth shall be flexible and made to fit his needs.

Whereas Brave New World gave us a vision of a soft new world in which people were stroked into compliance through their conditioning and the pleasures around them, 1984 offers a more brutal vision.  For me, one of the most chilling images of the book comes when O’Brien tells Winston, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”  Big Brother forces submission.  He batters beliefs into the heads of the people and demands absolute obedience.  The Two Minute Hate and the torments of Room 101 are just some examples of how Big Brother and the Party crush the human spirit until Winston has betrayed everyone and everything dear to him and, at the very end, when nothing else is left, Big Brother wins the ultimate victory sa Winston capitulates and betrays the last thing he possesses – himself:

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

1984 is memorable.  It has given us phrases that are now part of everyday language like Big Brother, Room 101, thought crime and Newspeak.  I first read it in 1983 and, although it has clearly not come true, the world Orwell describes had a massive impact upon my beliefs and my political beliefs.  I can completely understand why it would have been banned in the Soviet Union – they would have been crazy not to.  I can’t really see why it was banned in the USA, however.  It may have come about at the time of the McCarthy hearings and there may have been sensitivity about the authoritarian way that Americans were beginning to be harassed for having unorthodox political views.   I don’t know – just a thought.

There are very few books that are more “essential” than 1984, in my opinion.  I suspect you’ve read it too.  I would suggest reading it again, it really is worth it. 

2,602: 1,001 Book/Banned Book challenges - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World is ranked at number 52 on the American Library Association’s list of most banned or challenged books and has been frequently challenged, usually for its portrayal of sexual behaviour and drug use.  In Ireland, it was banned in 1932 for being anti-family and anti-religion.  It is generally considered one of the great Western dystopian novels of the 20^th Century, alongside Orwell’s 1984 and has given us the Alpha male (and, latterly, the Alpha female).

In Huxley’s Brave New World, love, family and religion have been eradicated.  War and conflict has been ended by the formation of the World State and the creation of a new society.  Children are artificially produced in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centres.  Scientific and industrial techniques are used to separate new foetuses into five castes (Alpha to Epsilon), with differing mental and physical attributes, and to engineer individual babies to suit their pre-determined careers and roles in society.  In addition to the physical engineering of society, babies and children are psychologically conditioned to be happy as a member of their caste and to accept and behave according to the cultural mores of the Brave New World.

The elimination or war and the imposition of a cap on total human population mean that material goods are in plentiful supply.  People are conditioned to consume, to have promiscuous sex and to need to be in the company of others.  The use of a recreational drug, Soma, is encouraged and seen as perfectly normal.  A desire to be alone is seen as anti-social and the concept of the family is considered pornographic.  The few individuals who do not conform are, when caught, exiled to remote islands such as the Falklands or Iceland to join communities of other non-conformists.

There remain a few reservations where “uncivilised” people live, savages who practice the old way of life in isolation from the rest of the world and it is the sudden contact between one of these savages and the World State that forms the basis of the plot.

If I’m being honest, the plot itself is pretty flimsy and almost seems to be a mere device to allow Huxley to develop his world.  The strength of the book is in the ideas that Huxley explores.  His world is basically a deadened world where emotions are dulled and peace maintained by the nihilistic hedonism of the populace.  History is not taught and historical books are forbidden, although there is probably no need for a formal ban as the vast majority are simply not interested.

On the face of it, Huxley fears the advent of such a world and, on this basis, the various bannings of Brave New World do not make sense as he is ostensibly warning us against the consequences of the very behaviour patterns that caused its banning.   And yet, I found that the book is not quite that clear cut.

We might find the society of the Brave New World disturbing – the engineering of foetuses into different castes, the elimination of family ties and the gruesome description of the birthing process are fearsome to our minds, used as we are to free will.  But if we have no free will and are conditioned to be happy in our pre-determined places, would life be so bad?  We would know no alternative and would not have anything to contrast against.  We would have been created content.  This is a very different future to that foreseen by Orwell, for example.  The Brave New World is not maintained by force and coercion.  It is not a miserable place, merely a dulled place.  Huxley himself seems ambivalent about it – the reservation from which the Savage comes is portrayed as a dirty and impoverished place and its inhabitants are not the Noble Savages of legend.  Even the World Controller, Mustapha Mond, is one of the more positively drawn characters of the novel.  On this basis, the attitude of the Irish government begins to make more sense if one accepts the premise that books should be banned for portraying unconventional behaviour positively (which I don’t!).

This is a profoundly thought-provoking work and a book that still has relevance for us today.  I read it and 1984 together and the two books are fascinating counterpoints to each other.  Ultimately, I recoil from the World State and its deadened, shallow world view but have to recognise its superficial attraction.

2,604: 1,001 Book/Banned Book challenges - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

“In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”  These were the words that launched a thousand fantasy novels and captivated generations of spotty schoolboys and students with too much leisure time.  With the publication of the Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien, an Oxford academic, introduced the world to Middle Earth and either created or popularised a number of the standard memes of fantasy literature.  Without him, we may well not have the likes of Pratchett, Eddings, Feist, Leiber and a host of other writers.  As well as books,  there are films, music, cartoons, video games, role playing games, board games, plays and musicals that have drawn on the themes and ideas that Tolkien introduced in the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion.

Since its first publication in 1937, the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Thorin Oakenshield and the other members of the company that journeyed from Bag End to the Lonely Mountain, via Mirkwood to dispossess Smaug the dragon of his ill-gotten treasure and re-establish Thorin as King under the Mountain have enthralled millions of readers.  Entire books of analysis and criticism have been written, making any efforts on my part superfluous.  Having  sold between 35 and 100 million copies worldwide, the Hobbit is generally considered a classic of children’s literature  and one of the few children’s books to command a wide adult readership.

I first came across the Hobbit as a small boy in the 1970s.  It transported me from small town life in the Home Counties to a far-away land where adventure could, and did, happen to even the staid Mr Baggins, whose idea of daring was leaving home without a decent supply of pocket handkerchiefs.  I eagerly followed Bilbo on his journey from timid inhabitant of Bag End to burglar, Elf friend and Giant Spider slayer.  The Hobbit led me to the Lord of the Rings and then to a juvenile passion for Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games and instilled in me a lifelong enjoyment of fantasy novels.  I even read it in French on a family holiday to Normandy (how sad was I!). The Hobbit is often recommended as a way to encourage 11-14 year old boys to read and, although I was already a keen reader when I picked it up, I would completely agree with this.

Although it is a prelude to the Lord of the Rings and usually viewed in this light, it is really a wholly separate work.  The tone of the Hobbit is very much that of a children’s novel.  For example, one of the stylistic tools Tolkien uses is that of the author speaking directly to the reader.  Usually I find this irritating but, in the context of a story intended for children, it seems to work.  If you expect this tone to be maintained in the Lord of the Rings, you will quickly be disappointed as, somewhere between Bag End and Rivendell, the tone shifts to that of an adult book.  In reality, although Tolkien made some amendments to the second edition of the Hobbit to make it more consistent with the Lord of the Rings, he didn’t intend the latter as a sequel.  Indeed, following the initial success of the Hobbit, when his publisher asked him for more on Middle Earth, he responded by writing the Silmarillion.  This was set in a much earlier period of Middle Earth’s history, with none of the same characters and written in a wholly different tone.

In re-reading the Hobbit as part of the Banned Books challenge, I tried and failed to understand why it would have been burned (in New Mexico) or banned (several libraries and schools in the USA).  Apparently, Tolkien’s works are considered “satanic” by some Christians.  Now I confess to being no theologian but I can’t really see which part of the Christian faith is threatened by Bilbo.  Presumably, it must be the acceptance of magic use but maybe someone could enlighten me.

Is this a book that must be read before one dies?  Unequivocally, yes, yes, yes.  Not only is it an important work but it is a great read.  If you were unfortunate enough not to have encountered it as a child, get a copy now and read it.  If you have a child, buy them a copy and, if possible, read it with them.  Please.  It will be worth it.

Banned Books Week 2010

We are all familiar with Nazis burning books or the censorship imposed by communist regimes but book banning  also takes place in the USA, the UK and Western Europe.  We may be able to understand (if not approve of) the banning or challenging of some books but even a cursory inspection of a list of banned books will raise eyebrows.  A quick question for you – what do the following books all have in common?  Harry Potter, Twilight, the Grapes of Wrath,  Anne Frank’s Diary and James and the Giant Peach?  Yes, that’s right.  They have all been banned in various parts of the western world.

I find myself at a total loss to see why we should be barred from reading any of these books.  If they can be banned or challenged in free societies, how much worse must it be under authoritarian regimes?  If books such as those listed above can be banned under benign government, what would happen if we wound up with a government that was hostile to freedom of expression?

Our enjoyment of the freedom to read and to express ourselves cannot be taken lightly or for granted.  We may be able to laugh at the silliness of the Colorado librarian who locked away Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or the weirdness of the Hunanese provincial government for banning Alice in Wonderland but what happens when governments ban books that are critical of them or church  groups can have books banned that do not conform to their strictures?  We need to celebrate our freedoms so that we do not forget how important they are to us.

Banned Books Week has taken place in the US every year since 1982, although there doesn’t appear to be a UK equivalent. This year it is taking place between 25 September and 2 October and to mark it I am taking part in the Banned Books Reading Challenge hosted at Steph Sue Reads, which started at the beginning of September.  Between now and the end of the challenge on 15 October, I will be reading 7 banned or challenged books, one for each day of Banned Books Week.  The selected works are:

•          1984 by George Orwell.  This book has the distinction of having been banned in the Soviet Union for being anti-communist and having been challenged in Florida for being pro-communist.  Go figure.
•          Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.  This was banned by the Irish government for its depictions of sexual promiscuity and drug taking.  As the novel was trying to warn of the possible consequences of these activities, they seem slightly to have missed the point.
•          Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.  A book about a man turning into a cockroach.  Seems harmless enough, right?  Not really.  It was banned in the Soviet Union.  For being depressing.  Unlike the USSR.  Or maybe not.  It also managed to get banned in Nazi Germany to complete a special Double.
•          Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.  What on earth could get this children’s story banned?  Well, the Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit managed to have the book banned in Hunan, China in 1931 for the crime of having talking animals.  How dangerous.
•          Fiesta: the Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.  Banned in Boston and Ireland, this book is included to represent all those books burned by the Nazis in the 1930s.
•          the Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Burned in New Mexico  in 2001 for being satanic and banned by other US school districts.  Bilbo Baggins aka Lucifer? Hmmm.  Not sure about that one.
•          Fahrenheit 451.  Ironic really.  The book deals with the implications to society of banning books.  And then was itself banned in parts of the USA.  Really, you couldn’t make it up.

Check back here regularly to see how I get on!