[ SECRET POST #2632 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2632 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Game of Thrones]


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03.
[Patrick Stump / Fall Out Boy]


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04.
[Men in Black, Agent Coulson]


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05.
[Twin Peaks]


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06.
[Defenders of Berk/How To Train Your Dragon 2]


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07.
[Lily Allen]


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08.
[Attack on Titan]


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09.
[The Brittas Empire]


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10.
[Panic! at the Disco]


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11.
[Frozen]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 037 secrets from Secret Submission Post #376.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

banned books

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics

I need to read a "banned" book for my English class off this list. I'm not sure which I should pick. Sell me on a book, guys!

Re: banned books

[caecilia]

one of the Toni Morrison ones

I haven't read either of those but I liked The Bluest Eye. She has nice, flowing prose.

Re: banned books

[inkdust]

The Bluest Eye was not my favorite :( Nothing to do with the prose, though. I'm sure that was good.

Re: banned books

[lunabee34]

Sula! Was Sula banned?

I adore that book hard hard hard.

Re: banned books

[(Anonymous)]

Brideshead Revisited is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read - Evelyn Waugh, whatever else you want to say about him, was one of the greatest prose writers ever. It's also chock-full of subtext about gay relationships if that's the kind of thing that appeals to you.

Really though most every book on that list is worth reading.

Re: banned books

[tabaqui]

YES YES YES YES.

Re: banned books

[lunabee34]

I adore that book.

Re: banned books

[mekkio]

Animal Farm! Because it will change you. You'll never be able to look at politics across the globe the same way again. You'll start seeing the book in every revolution and in every dictatorship.

There are so many good books on that list but that's the one I would choose.

Re: banned books

[ansela_jonla]

Lord of the Rings is good, but I wouldn't recommend it for a class book, just because of the length.

I'd suggest 1984 or Animal Farm.

Re: banned books

[(Anonymous)]

If you like dark humor at all, I'd go for Catch-22. It's an incredibly incisive, incredibly hilarious look at the nonsensicality of war. Of the books I've read off that list, it's my second favorite, after Lord of the Rings.

Other ones I've read and enjoyed:
Slaugterhouse 5, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 1984, Brave New World.

Re: banned books

[blueonblue]

What do you usually like to read? They're all really different. Beloved is not at all like Cat's Cradle. I've read all of the books on that list except for the Faulkner - the one I love the most is Brideshead Revisted, but it's not necessarily the best.

Re: banned books

[feotakahari]

How good a reader are you? The Lord of the Flies is a surprisingly fast read if you're prepared for it, but you need to be ready for some confusing patches. (Basically, if Philip K. Dick is hard mode, and Princess Tutu is easy mode, Lord of the Flies is about a quarter of the way up from PT.)

Animal Farm is another fast read, and it's easier to interpret. It doesn't do much in terms of characterization, but if you have a fondness for black humor, you'll probably like it.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a hard one, since it's entirely from the POV of a badly medicated schizophrenic, but it's a pretty awesome read. The author has a knack for tracing around the edges of some truly horrible stuff, letting readers fill in the blanks and figure out exactly what's going on.

Edit: Oops, I looked at the wrong list. I've removed the ones that weren't on the short list.

Re: banned books

[rubbertea]

as nursejoy said, anything by toni morrison. beloved in particular, it's her best work

1984 is also a very good one but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone because holy shit that book can reduce you to an emotional black hole for a few hours to a few days the first time you read it, and I say that as someone who's not emotional at all

if you want a plotty story with no soul-crushing elements, read the great gatsby

Re: banned books

[iceyred]

You can't go wrong with any of those. If it's banned, you should read it. Don't let anyone tell you what you can or cannot think, read, or write.

Personally, I like 'Gone With the Wind,' 'Lolita,' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' I'm sad to see 'Fahrenheit 451' isn't on the list. The irony of a book about the dangers of banning book being banned is nectar on my brain.

I can actually sell you on a few of these, OP.

[(Anonymous)]

Do you like first-person POV from an interesting character? To Kill a Mockingbird.

Do you like dystopic science fiction written 300 years before its time but still applicable today? 1984 (Wait, hold up a minute, why is 1984 banned now? I had to read that for school....)

Good old science fiction future that's really a dystopia but all the characters think they're in Utopia? Brave New World.

....I have absolutely no idea why Invisible Man was banned, it is excellent Victorian SF, written by the master of the genre of the day.

Wait, Call of the Wild was banned?? WHY? OK maybe PETA doesn't like it....Basically a first-person(canine?) POV of a working dog in the Yukon at the turn of the century. (Watching the movie instead of the book will NOT earn you a passing grade, the two are vastly different.)

....also no idea why LOTR was banned.

Do you like true crime police procedurals that get inside the heads of the villians? In Cold Blood. (I can also recommend the original movie with Keir Dullea. Yes, Dave from 2001. The remake from a few years ago was meh, and not nearly as close to the book as the original.)

Cat's Cradle is the greatest, funniest, most entertaining, most engaging book ever written in the history of the English language, OP. Just saying. (Why was it banned??)

Re: banned books

[(Anonymous)]

My votes go to 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird, personally. 1984 is riveting, sucks you in immediately and doesn't let you go until it's over, but man it'll hollow you out the first time through, it's intense. To Kill a Mockingbird has a much gentler flow about it, and viewing devastating things from the vantage point of a child is fascinating. Both have excellent and memorable characters. 1984 is the one that I keep going back to over and over, though.

Re: banned books

[greenvelvetcake]

Another vote for Toni Morrison. Beloved can be a tough, dark read but it's very good. I enjoyed it more than Song of Solomon.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a beautiful book, and though it deals with racism, it's more light-hearted than Beloved.

As I Lay Dying can be a bit slow but I think the payoff at the end is worth it.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest... Grapes of Wrath... Of Mice and Men... There are a lot of amazing books here. Can you tell us more what you're looking for?

PS, if you like 1984

[dethtoll]

I don't know if Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon was ever banned (it probably was, given that it's almost transparently a critique of Stalin-era USSR) but it's a great read and in a way much more personal, psychological and grounded than 1984.

Re: banned books

[skippydelicious]

I'd recommend picking James Joyce, Ulysses. Basically because you don't have to read it. Just read a few pages at random to get the feel of the book and pick up a few cites, and then you can make up whatever the hell you like for the rest of the assignment. Not as if anyone can say you are wrong with that book.

Re: banned books

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of these books are extremely good. It depends a lot on what you like.

Toni Morrison's writing is very dense and intense, and reading it feels kind of like the reading equivalent of being in a very humid, thick-growing place, only instead of vines and leaves, it's images and emotions. Faulkner is the same way -- sentences like strangler vines You might like that and you might not. I love it.

Dreiser's An American Tragedy is almost as dense in its own way, but more journalistic, more like walking a crowded city street than tramping through the Everglades. It's like what would happen if a true crime author got too wrapped up in his subject to stick to verifiable facts, gave up, and wrote a big, sprawling novel instead -- which is pretty much exactly what did happen. It's one of the least popular books on that list, and one of my favorites -- a compelling look at some hidden sides of life in early 20thc America.

The Great Gatsby is poetic, but more lightly written -- not that it's shallow (though the characters tend to be) but reading it is more like walking alone in a nice park at sundown -- easy and pleasant and a little ominous. You can read the whole thing in about a day.

Catch-22 is a dark comedy satire about war and bureaucracy, and very, very funny sometimes. 1984 is an unrelentingly grim dystopia where you don't even get good mind-control drugs to pass the time (but very vivid, if you like dystopias you can taste) that is also a satire of the time it was written. Lolita is a maddeningly eloquent comedy of horrors narrated by a pedophile. If you're up for that, it's really good.

What kinds of things do you usually like to read?

Re: banned books

[(Anonymous)]

There's a lot of good books on that list but I personally really enjoy A Separate Peace although I know a lot of people who think it's a bit boring. There's a healthy chunk of slash fodder if you're into that.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for all the suggestion so far! You're amazing.
To answer some questions:
Sorry, I forgot to mention that I've already read The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, The Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, Animal Farm, The Jungle, and The Awakening
I have a week to read whatever I end up choosing, but I'm a fast reader as long as it pulls me in. And I'm open to reading anything :)

Re: banned books

[(Anonymous)]

I'd choose A Clockwork Orange.

I really like it, although the invented words are a tad confusing sometimes.

Re: banned books

[(Anonymous)]

For what it's worth, I may have "forgotten" to give back my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird after we read it in school. It's absolutely terrific.

Re: banned books

[(Anonymous)]

When I had to do this, I chose Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It was a pretty ease read if I remember correctly and it was really easy to write a paper on since the banned elements are pretty obvious and you can compare it 1984 and other dystopian books and there are a lot themes to explore.

A basic synopsis of the world is that all children are artificially made. Families are looked down on but sex and enjoyment are approved. Everyone is happy, sometimes genetically programmed to be. But there's a reservation where people still have children the old fashion way. A man from the reservation is invited to join society and learns more about it. There's some religious stuff but I don't remember it being obnoxious. If that sounds interesting, you might want to give this one a try. I think it's more world-building than plot, but I don't really remember. I thought it was pretty good though.