Open Books for Open Minds

Here's to the authors who wrote the truth so eloquently that someone, somewhere was afraid that others would become enlightened too. I fully intend on reading every work; ">" indicates that I have done so already. I have some catching up to do.

Celebrate Banned Book Week!
September 26−October 3, 2009
http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm
"Observed during the last week of September each year since 1982."

Top 100 Banned Books in America:
> 1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
> 2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
> 4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
> 5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
> 8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
> 10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
> 12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
> 13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
> 15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
> 17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
> 18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
> 19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
> 24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
> 34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
> 39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
> 47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
> 50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
> 60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
> 61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Mia Nonna

My Grandpa has a cardboard box of memories-- pictures of my beautiful Grandma throughout her life. It became apparent a year ago that, while he was far more susceptible to the disease, she was showing signs of Alzheimer's. Miraculously, she still remembers our names and our memories. She has been on hospice for the past 3 weeks. Grandma has stopped eating, Grandpa can't stop crying.

My family invited him to dinner tonight. We talked about memories at their old house on Robert Ave., the hobbies that he wants to start up again, the hundreds of bells she collected that we plan to give away at her funeral so that everyone can have something to remember her by. Right before he left, he said,, "I know she's still here, but I still miss her everyday and I still hug my pillow every night. I just hope she feels the same."

In a strange way, I want that.