Read the Classics: Banned Book Through the Years

Author

Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896-1940

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

Jay Gatsby had once loved beautiful, spoiled Daisy Buchanan, then lost her to a rich boy. Now, mysteriously wealthy, he is ready to risk everything to woo her back. This is the definitive, textually accurate edition of a classic of twentieth-century literature, The Great Gatsby. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan has been acclaimed by generations of readers. But the first edition contained...

2) The catcher in the rye

Author

Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919-2010

Formats

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Story of Holden Caufield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. Holden, knowing he is to be expelled from school, decides to leave early. He spends three days in New York City and tells the story of what he did and suffered there.

3) The grapes of wrath

Author

Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968

Formats

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized—and sometimes outraged—millions of readers.
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven...

4) To kill a mockingbird

Author

Lee, Harper

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Print

Description

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Scout Finch, the young daughter of a local attorney in the Deep South during the 1930s, tells of her father's defense of an African-American man charged with the rape of a white girl.

5) The color purple

Author

Walker, Alice, 1944-

Formats

Book, eBook

Description

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A poor black Southern woman named Celie befriends two women who help her overcome the brutality of her father and husband.

6) Ulysses

Author

Joyce, James, 1882-1941

7) Beloved

Author

Morrison, Toni

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose...

8) Lord of the flies

Author

Golding, William, 1911-1993

Formats

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature. Labeled a parable,...

9) 1984

Author

Orwell, George, 1903-1950

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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75th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

"Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power."—The New Yorker

In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger

...

10) Lolita

Author

Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899-1977

Description

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The most controversial classic novel of the 20th century, Lolita tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who is aroused to erotic desire only by a young girl. Awe and exhilaration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of...

11) Of mice and men

Author

Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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A controversial tale of friendship and tragedy during the Great Depression
A Penguin Classic
Over seventy-five years since its first publication, Steinbeck’s tale of commitment, loneliness, hope, and loss remains one of America’s most widely read and taught novels. An unlikely pair, George and Lennie, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression, grasp for their American Dream. They hustle work when they...

12) Catch-22: a novel

Author

Heller, Joseph

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook

Description

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Set in the closing months of World War II in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, Catch-22 is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never even met keep trying to kill him.

13) Brave new world

Author

Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963

14) Animal farm

Author

Orwell, George, 1903-1950

Formats

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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The animals of Manor Farm have revolted and taken over. Upon the death of Old Major, pigs Snowball and Napoleon lead a revolt against Mr. Jones, driving him from the farm. The animals embrace the Seven Commandments of Animalism and life carries on, but in this classic dystopian novel, they learn that a farm ruled by animals looks more human than ever.

15) as i lay dying

This entry no longer exists in the catalog

16) A farewell to arms

Author

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961

Formats

Book, Audiobook CD, eAudiobook

Description

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By turns romantic and harshly realistic, Hemingway's story of a tragic romance set against the brutality and confusion of World War I cemented his fame as a stylist and as a writer of extraordinary literary power. A volunteer ambulance driver and a beautiful English nurse fall in love when he is wounded on the Italian front. The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance...

17) Their eyes were watching God

Author

Hurston, Zora Neale

Formats

Book, eAudiobook

Description

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"A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don't know how to live properly." —Zadie Smith

One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston.

...

18) Invisible man

Author

Ellison, Ralph

Formats

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

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In the course of his wanderings from a Southern Negro college to New York's Harlem, an American black man becomes involved in a series of adventures. Introduction explains circumstances under which the book was written. Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity--powerfully imagined and written with a savage,...

19) Gone with the wind

Author

Mitchell, Margaret, 1900-1949

Formats

Book, eAudiobook

Description

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After the Civil War sweeps away the genteel life to which she has been accustomed, Scarlett O'Hara sets about to salvage her plantation home.

20) Native son

Author

Wright, Richard, 1908-1960

Formats

Book, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...

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Read the Classics: Banned Book Through the Years