Influence

In this post: Booking Through Thursday and Thursday Thirteen

Do other people influence what you choose to read? When a family member recommends something, or a friend says they hated a book you were planning to read … does it affect your reading choices?

Sometimes I deliberately read a book because others say they hated it or even because it has bad (mixed?) reviews, especially if the review was by a book industry authority I trust. It's interesting to be intrigued. I enjoy my own curiosity and I can't seem to rest until I find out why the book was reviewed like that.

Thursday 13: Banned books that I *have never read, #already read or studied, and @fancy reading: (Edit 2/8/13: banned by governments)

1. @The Bible. I make no promise I can read this entirely though.

2. *Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov. Why in 1964 France, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Argentina thought it was obscene - I'm curious to know.

3. #@The Canterbury Tales (late 14th century) by Geoffrey Chaucer. When we studied this collection in English Literature class, and later when I required it on Marine academy seniors as supplemental reading, I didn't know this was banned. Therefore now that I know it once was, I want to get my hands on it again.

4. #The Da Vinci Code (2003) by You Know Who err... Dan Brown. Lord help! It would be exciting if they tried to hide all the Harry Potter books too. My mother banned my son from watching the films. Wicked :)

5. *The Diary of Anne Frank (1947) by Anne Frank. A copy has been sitting on my shelf for ages I'm no longer sure if I still have it or it's been borrowed. Now I want to know what's wrong with "portraying Zionism favorably."

6. *Doctor Zhivago (1957) by Boris Pasternak. I may watch the film first and then find out why Jake in Must Love Dogs liked it.

7. *Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley. We read some of Percy Bysshe Shelley's work in class. I didn't know then that his wife was talented too, and I want to know what does Frankenstein have to do with apartheid in South Africa.

8. @Lysistra (411 B.C.) by Aristophanes. Just because in the script "Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace" Greece, in 1967 banned it for its anti-war message? Does being sex-deprived make humans anti-war? Aren't we admonished to 'make love, not war'? Now I'm confused.

9. @Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell. Stalin probably couldn't take the suggestion that it's a satire on his leadership. I read the book during bus rides to the border between Cambodia and Thailand where I go bargain-hunting. I wonder where did Orwell get his ideas. He seemed possessed.

10. #Noli Mi Tangere (1887) by Jose Rizal. This was a whole year of study in 4th year high school. If the teacher had her personal opinions on the corruption and abuse of the Spanish government on Filipinos, she handled it subtly. But I did harbor some dislike against Spain or Spanish people that time. 

11. *Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe influenced Jose Rizal to write Noli Mi Tangere, which eventually got him killed. 

12. *Areopagitica (1644) by John Milton. I want to read it just because it's hundreds of years old, and old intrigues me.

13. *Freemason Or Dajjal (2007) by Kamran Rad. Recently I was on friendly talking terms with a Freemason. It will be nice to not sound too out of this world if we ever talked again.