Amph America's most banned books. 1 - Huh?

50. Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones - Alvin Schwartz

[image=http://www.thefleshfarm.com/scary3cov.gif]

Being the weakest of the three, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones still has much to be desired. Being released exactly 10 years after the first of the series, this third and last edition to the trilogy marks the end of one of the best collections of folklore ever created.

With stories ranging from a boy bringing a dog home to find out it's actually a sewer rat with rabies to a young girl with a spider infested boil on her cheek, this addition leaves us with interesting yet chilling tails of the macabre.


Just Delicious

George Flint loved to eat. Each day at noon he closed his camera shop for two hours and went home for a big lunch his wife Mina cooked for him. George was a bully, and Mina was a timid woman who did everything he asked because she was afraid of him.

On his way home for lunch one day, George stopped at the butcher shop and bought a pound of liver. He loved liver. He would have Mina cook it for dinner that night. Despite all his complaints about her, she was a very good cook.

While George ate his lunch, Mina told him that a rich old woman in town had died. Her body was in the church next door. It was in an open coffin. Anyone who wanted to see her could. As usual, George was not interested in what she had to say. "I've got to go back to work," he told her.
After he left, Mina began to cook the liver. She added vegetables and spices and simmered it all afternoon, just the way George liked it. When she thought it was done, she cut off a small piece and tasted it. It was delicious, the best she had ever made. She ate a second piece. Then a third. It was so good, she could not stop eating it.
It was only when the liver was all gone that she thought of George. He would be coming home soon. What would he do when he found that she had eaten all of the liver? Some men would laugh - but not George. He would be angry and mean, and she did not want to face that again. But where could she get another piece of liver that late in the day.
Then she remembered the old woman lying in the church next door waiting to be buried....

George said he had never had a better dinner. "Have some liver, Mina," he said. "It's just delicious."
"I'm not hungry," she said. "You finish it."

That night, after George had fallen asleep, Mina sat in bed trying to read. But all she could think about was what she had done. Then she thought she heard the woman's voice.
"Who has my liver?" it asked. "Who has it?"
Was it her imagination? Was she dreaming?
Now the voice was closer. "Who has my liver?" it asked. "Who has it?"
Mina wanted to run. "No, no," she whispered. "I don't have it. I don't have your liver."
Now the voice was right next to her. "Who has my liver?" it asked. "Who has it?"
Mina froze with terror. She pointed to George. "He does," she said. "He has it!"
Suddenly the light went out - and George screamed, and screamed.





So there you are, not particularly scary. I have no idea why this book has been banned, it's no worse than Tales of the Unexpected. Perhaps it's because it's aimed at children?

 

My friends and I spent a LOT of time with those books. The stories were so-so, but coupled with the grotesque line drawings they scared the crap out of us for hours.

 

You can see some of those pictures here

http://www.thefleshfarm.com/scary3P.html

 

Really, those books are banned? I have fond memories of reading those. They'd scare the crap out of me when I was younger.

 

Yeah, as a child, this was pretty brain frying stuff. I don't remember which book in the series it was that had the one about the girl who always wore the ribbon around her neck . . . but that one, well, I still remember it vividly.

 

Never heard of it, but it might not have made it to the wilds of Northern Ontario.

 

49. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/54/OneHundredYearsOfSolitude.jpg]


One Hundred Years of Solitude is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez. It was first published in Spanish in 1967. The book was an instant success worldwide and was translated into over 27 languages. Lauded critically, the book contributed to the Latin American "Boom" in literature and the development of the postmodernism literary style. It was also an immense commercial success, becoming the best-selling book in Spanish in modern history, after Don Quixote. The product of 15 months of work, during which García Márquez barricaded himself in his house, it broke his writer's block and is widely considered García Márquez's magnum opus.

The novel chronicles a family's struggle and the history of their fictional town, Macondo. Although the title implies that the story spans one hundred years, it is unclear exactly how much time the narrative covers. This ambiguity contributes to the novel's treatment of time, as there is a notion that time lapses, repeats, changes speeds, or stops altogether at different parts of the story, and that all the events in some sense happen simultaneously. Like many other novels by Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude crosses genres, combining elements of romance, history, and fantasy. The narrative style of the novel was especially praised and extensively studied - ostensibly objective but often manifestly ridiculous, it combined García Márquez's experience as a journalist with the literary style of magical realism and extensive uses of metaphors and irony.







Well, it seems clear to me that this novel endangers the very fabric of American society...

 

Why on earth would this book be banned?

 

i tried reading (i liked the title) but couldn't cope with the tedium of the style.

 

Read it last summer. I appreciated the thematic aspects of the story, while on a line by line level I have to objectively credit Marquez's ability with stylistic prose. It's a book I'll never pick up again, though. Too erratically whimsical and absurd for my taste.

More on topic, however, I'm not seeing how 100 Years is one of the country's most banned.

And to go back to those Scary Story books for a second - definitely count me in on the nostalgia trip. After being reminded of the sewer rat and red ribbon stories, I instantly recalled them like I read them a year ago rather than almost twenty. I remember at the book fairs my elementary school had the Scary Story books seemed to be the ones everyone fought to get their hands on.

 

I agree. I find this book vastly overrated. A much better magical realist novel is Pedro Paramo, which is actually incredibly engaging and imaginative. But it's a hard genre to pull off. Can't think why it would be banned though; books aren't generally banned for being bland, but apparently this one was.

 

García Márquez isn't really my cup of tea either, though I don't dislike him, but there's no reason he should be banned.

 

banned books should at least be exciting in a number of ways.

 

Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits is magic realism lite, but it's an easier read than 100 Year's of Solitude.

 

48. Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols - Edna Barth

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/halibut/halloween.jpg]


Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols remains one of the clearest, most accessible explanations of the history of Halloween around. Edna Barth--author of many nonfiction holiday books for children--sets her story 2,000 years in the past, when October 31 marked a joyous harvest festival for the Celts and, more frighteningly, when potentially evil spirits were unleashed from the Celtic underworld. Her fascinating account of the events that led up to modern-day Halloween explore the cringe-worthy history of witches; where the word jack-o'-lantern comes from (the story involves someone named Stingy Jack, diabolical deals, turnips, and glowing coals); the lore of bats, toads, and owls; why orange and black are the traditional Halloween colors; and how and where people celebrate Halloween today.

Barth's approach is straightforward and simple, and she doesn't gloss over (or dramatize) the darker aspects of Halloween's antecedents, such as the Celts' animal sacrifices and the Salem witch hunts. This rich study of a once-dreaded and now-lighthearted holiday--laden with lively, whimsical illustrations by Ursula Arndt--is sure to prompt children to ask questions about the history of holiday traditions in general. Perhaps Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts will make them take a second look at grinning jack-o'-lanterns, trick-or-treating witches, and other Halloween symbols and customs. A great book for kids who want to dig a little deeper into our mysterious, spooky past! (Ages 9 to 12)




Gasp! Kids learning about factual history rather than misinformation and lies? We can't have that now, can we?

 

I know Mexico is trying to ban Halloween, but this makes no sense.

 

These books won't still be banned. It's just that in the past, and in some degree, they have been banned in the US.

 

The Catholic Church don't approve of Halloween, or so some of them say.

 

Right, so it may have been banned at catholic schools for example.

 

That may be the source of it. Most Halloween traditions and imagery are Protestant in origin. Mexico doesn't like it because it's an American tradition (with a strong Scot/Irish/English component)

Halloween Events Banned at Moscow Schools

The Russians won't give the real reason, which is that it's American, I think.

 

Zaz posted:
,,The Catholic Church don't approve of Halloween, or so some of them say."

Why?

 

because it'S pagan perhaps?

 

Yeah, but its prety harmless.

 

Sounds like YOU should read this book, Sven. Halloween's history is hardly "harmless"