In Honor of Banned Book Week: Passages from Six Books (not all of them were banned)

WARNING THIS ENTRY CONTAINS ONE VULGAR WORD.

Books by William S. Burroughs, Jim Thompson and Bret Easton Ellis are among the books we will be citing here. Banned Book Week concludes tomorrow. Of the books cited, we are pretty sure "Junky" by Burroughs (pictured top) and "Motorcycle Diaries" by Che Guevara were once banned. The other authors have each written controversial novels, including Ellis, who is best-known for "American Psycho," but we quip a sentence from "Glamorama" (pictured bottom) here.

For this project, we are taking the fifth sentence from page 52 of each work. The answers will be at the very end of this entry:


1. "She pulled her mouth away from his and pushed it against his neck, then pushed one of her hands down between them and the buckle of his pants."

2. " 'Uh-hah,' he nodded: "Miss Ruth told me she thought you might be here, but you was already gone when stopped by. Got you a job, eh?"

3. "He sounds terrible."

4. "How long this present order, based on an absurd idea of caste, will last, I can't say, but it's time governments spent less time publicizing their own virtues and more money, much more money, funding socially useful projects."

5. A gambling-house dealer from East Saint Louis was describing a method for cooking the carbolic acid out of a phenol, seet oil and tincture of opium script."

6, "No myths. M-y-t-h-s. Like a fag was gonna introduce you to Miss America, what would he say?"




1. "The Graduate" by Charles Webb (yes, it's the novel that was made into a Dustin Hoffman movie)

2. "Savage Night" by Jim Thompson (pictured middle)

3. "Trainspotting" by Irvine Welsh

4. "Motorcycle Diaries" by Che Guevara

5. "Junky" by William S.. Burroughs

6. "Glamorama" by Bret Easton Ellis (yes, that has our one vulgar word).


http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com (Our sister blog)

http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/ (bookshop in Durham, NC)

http://www.kramers.com/index.html (book store in Washington, DC)

http://www.tatteredcover.com/ (book store in Denver, Colo.)

http://www.richmondpubliclibrary.org/ (Richmond Public Library, Richmond, Va)

http://www.provlib.org/ (Providence Public Library in Providence, Rhode Island)

http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

Ten Novels to Re-Read: The Great Gatsby, et al

As beach-reading season is winding down, we thought we'd take a look at some great, vintage novels which are worth of a second, third or even a fourth look.

Many of these novels are listed in the Modern Library's best novels.

Here is the list:

1. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) #2 on the Modern Library list

2. "Lord of the Flies" by William Goldig (1954) #41 on the ML list

3. "The Black Book" ("Kara Kitap") by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey. 1990. English version published in 1994)

4. "Less Than Zero" by Breat Easton Ellis (1985)

5. "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk (1996)

6. "Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerny (1984)

7. "Deliverance" by James Dickey (1970) #42 on the Modern Library List

8. "1984" by George Orwell (1949) #13 on Modern Library List

9. "Franny and Zooey" by J.D. Salinger (1961)

10. "Catch 22" by by Joseph Heller (1961) #7 on the Modern Library List

http://www.modernlibrary.com

http://www.malaprops.com/ (Indy bookstore in Asheville, NC)

http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/ (Indy bookstore in Durham, NC)

http://www.boulderbookstore.net/ (Indy bookstore in Boulder, Colo.)

Casualties of Modern Technology- CliffsNotes (3 of 12)

Today, students have more creative, easy ways to cheat, or they just use Wikipedia. (Ironically, we used Wikiepedia for research on CliffsNotes*).

But, back when I was in high school in the mid-1980s, everyone who was too lazy to read titles like "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane, sought the CliffsNotes version. Other CliffsNotes, including everything from William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" to contemporary novels, such as "Less Than Zero" by Bret Easton Ellis.

While looking for images for this entry, we also came across a hilarious satire: "CliffsNotes for The Karate Kid."

The CliffsNotes were started by the late Cliff Hileglass (1918-2001) of Lincoln, Neb., who got the idea from a Canadian. The series started with 16 Shakespeare titles.

But, today, Wikipedia can usually provide info for even the most obscure of titles with the exception of this great 2010 novel called "The H-Bomb and Jesus Rock" by John Manderino about growing up in the 1960s, which I read a few months ago. Perhaps, if Manderino is reading this, he can fill me in!

*- Don't forget the 's!' Yes, many of us used to call them CliffNotes, but it is actually Cliffsnotes and to make matters even more confusing, they used to be called Cliff's Notes. The company is still in business, and published many titles, by the way.

Status Update- Ben Cok Yorgunum (I'm Verrry Tired!)

Under 'normal' circumstances, I may have been tempted to stay up from 2:00 a.m-3:30 a.m., Hartford, Connecticut Time, and watched "Grizzly," a '70s crazy horror film about a bear who really, really goes wild and presumably eats people on TCM Underground.

But, I have been very overwhelmed---to put it mildly, in fact, right now, even though I am not a serial killer or sociopath, I am reminded of that Bret Easton Ellis novel "American Psycho" (1991), a book which I'm not sure what to make of even though Ellis is one of my favorite contemporary novelists, in which the title character Patrick Bateman states the haunting line 'this is not an exit,' meaning there is no escape!

SIDEBAR_One of the entries that I am working on, is another installment of our famous people with long, difficult names list. Nil Karaibrahimgil (perhaps I've mentioned this before?!), a female Turkish pop singer, is among the candidates for the list. They just played one of her songs today on "The Turkish Music Hour," which actually lasts 90 minutes. The show from WUVT-FM (90.7-FM, Blacksburg, Va.) airs and streams online from 1:00-2:30 p.m. on Saturdays.