The Courage to Stand Up to Censors

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s classic novel, residents “report” their neighbors to the authorities for having books, which are then burned and their owners killed or punished.

Censorship is one of the main themes, but for many years the novel was itself banned, considered inappropriate because it involved a scene in which the Bible is burned.

In being blacklisted, Fahrenheit 451 joined the list of classics such as The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, Beloved and many others considered immoral, obscene and just "inappropriate" for the public.

Banned Books Week, which began Sunday and runs through October 6, honors authors who have the courage to write about taboo topics as well as the schools, libraries and book stores who did not cave in to pressure to remove controversial titles from their shelves.

And don't think that censorship is a thing of the past. Last year alone, there were 326 attempts in the U.S. to ban or restrict books from schools and/or libraries, according to the American Library Association.

Want to see which books have been targeted over the years? Check out the list below, then tell us your favorite banned book in the comments. 

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Ulysses, by James Joyce

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

1984, by George Orwell

Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison

Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Native Son, by Richard Wright

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence

Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs

Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh

Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence

The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer

Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller

An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

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