On the subject of banning books--I don't think any books should be banned. Seriously. I can only see myself wanting a book banned if it was something like, a picture book for babies, with tons of swearing or something...
To me, books are for learning, and for freedom of speech and what-not. Banning books because they're too "political" is completely...pointless, imho. If you ban all controversial books, how will people think outside the box? Ugh!

Catching up from the previous pages...I love, love, love seeing all the book covers!
Aly, the JS&MN cover is also one of my favorites, I forgot to post it And AJ, I love the cover of The Thief Lord

Valia, on the previous page you asked the differences between Bluebeard and Fitcher's Bird. In Bluebeard, the evil Bluebeard marries a girl, tells her not to look in a certain cupboard, he goes away giving her all the keys, she looks in the cupboard, sees the previous wives, murdered, the key drops in the blood and the stain won't come off. Bluebeard comes home, finds out, plans to kill her. While she's saying her prayers, her brothers come and rescue her. Yay.
In Fitcher's Bird, there are three sisters. The first one marries Bluebeard, is given a egg instead of a key. She looks in the forbidden closet and drops the egg. It gets stained. Bluebeard comes home, finds her, and kills her. This happens to the second sister as well. Then the third sister is married off to Bluebeard. He tells her he's going away, she must not look in that cupboard, here are all the keys, oh, and she must keep this egg with her at all times. As soon as Bluebeard leaves, what does she do? She goes to her room, puts the egg in a safe place, then goes to explore the castle. She finds her murdered sisters in the forbidden room, "magically" "puts them back together" and they're okay again. Bluebeard returns, finds the egg intact, and pronounces her his bride. She then manages to cunningly sneak her sisters off to their fathers house, and the story ends with her locking Bluebeard up in his castle with all his evil friends while she sets it on fire.

Hm, I really should have saved this for the Fairy Tales SF when it comes about, yes? But, I hope that answered your question!

I'm the same Val_Lu, I don't believe in ever banning books. There's plenty of books out there with stuff I don't agree with in, so I just don't read them

Jo - I think that's why I like that cover so much - I find it really evokes how I felt when reading Bury My Heart.

I agree with both of you. If a child is mature enough to understand (I mean really understand) the content matter of a book, then he's old enough to be "allowed" to read it. Chances are the people that banned some of these books. . . never even read them and are merely going off of preconceived notions about the authors or the books. I mean, come on! I've never read LOTR, but even I know that they're not "irreligious."

Ditto to both Shantih and Val with the issue of banned books. I don't believe in ever banning books, especially on the ridiculous excuse that I don't agree with them. Honestly, it's written by someone who's not me so to ban them on that grounds is just silly. What happened to freedom of speech and freedom of the press? If you don't like what someone is saying, don't listen. If you don't like what someone has written, don't read it.

It's as simple as that.

Sorry, I can get a little heated on the subject. I just think it's really, really, really unfair.

I do find it hilarious though that The Biography of Benjamin Franklin is considered too risque.

P.S."Brooklyn!"

What? Are you serious? Those books being banned seems ridiculous! Maybe it's because the teachers can't teach the material in the books well enough and the kids get weird ideas. The books seriously have good messages and life lessons.

I can kind of understand it, because it's a school library-- but seriously. I read two of them for school and (while I hated the books as stories ) they were classic works and worth reading, even if it didn't particularly suit my style.

I love the Underland Chronicles covers

Meh, I think the whole Banned Books! issue is overhyped. Unless you're the Library of Congress, someone IS judging which books are deserving and which aren't; it's unavoidable. I certainly don't agree with "banning" books per se--and a lot of my favourite books were challenged at one time or another--but as far as what's in a school library and what's not, somebody draws the line somewhere. The difference of opinion is where the lines should be drawn, not whether they should be drawn--no one argues that kids should be exposed to (for example) pornography or torture in the name of freedom of expression.

Also, having a spot on that list doesn't mean that that book is banned in school libraries across the country up to this very day, etc etc. Censorship is a safe thing to rant about because it's supposed to be controversial but hardly anyone actually promotes it A couple cantankerous or concerned librarians and parents who happen to make the news do not equal Fahrenheit 451. Especially because banning a book only increases its popularity.

I will shut up now...

Love the book covers, all I especially like TPB cover AJAikenposted, and Jo's Battle for Middle Earth, and W4J's That Hideous Strength.

Ok, so I'm getting the idea that I ought to read the Hunger Games books... ?

Banned books. Hmm... I'm not a believer in book censorship but there are some books that shouldn't be available in public libraries - namely pornography.
Otherwise, it's very easy to become overly legalistic and ban books here and there, not based on God's Truth or their context and worldview, but purely on their content and personal preference.
That said, there are some people who are sick individuals and would try to pass off pornography as 'art', so you have to be careful deciding which side of the fence to sit on. It's an important issue but not an easy one.

The only time I think book banning is appropriate is in libraries intended only for children. Obviously you don't need explicit sex in books that only ten year olds will have access too. But in regular public libraries? Put whatever you want in them. If you want to get really nit-picky about what goes into public libraries you'd have to ban the Bible as well. Just think about all the rapes and dismemberments in the Old Testament. From what I've seen, most people who are pro-censorship are prudish reactionaries who've never actually read the books they want banned. That's how you get people babbling about characters summoning demons in Harry Potter and assorted nonsense like that.

I just had to read TCON: Voyage of the Dawn Treader again! The story really touches me, . Aslan is my favorite character in the book of course, since he started Narnia. Long live Narnia! *goes back on the last page I stopped in the book*.

^^ me too! I just re-read it and then I also listened to the audio book a million times this summer

I just re-read Inkspell for the 5th time. the Inkheart trilogy is addicting!

Just recently, I finally finished Stephen King's The Stand. It's an excellent book but theres a section in the last 3rd of the book that's beyond dull. I struggled to return to the book but continued onwards a week or so later. I'm glad I did. Wow.

Here's my review:

The Stand is often reputed to be Stephen King's finest novel and it's easy to see why. He was inspired to write this book after reading The Lord of the Rings and in turn, The Stand became the blue-print for the hit TV-series - Lost (of which King was/is a huge fan). This epic novel is largely character-centric. The characters are great, whether the reader learns to love them or love to hate them. The character development is so rich that the reader feels they personally get to know the characters. The premise has been done many a time before - massive plague threatens the existence of mankind, but rarely (if ever) has it been done so well. The novel is long, well over a 1,000 pages, but for the most part, it moves at a brisk pace. My only complaints are that I found maybe 100 or so pages in the last 3rd of the novel to be superfluous. This time is spent developing the characters, but the story draws to a stand-still; the danger seems far off. Nothing moves the story forward. Also, there is some strong adult content, most of it necessary but some not so much. Still, it's King, the reader's not exactly going into it expecting Janette Oake content. A great read for adults. 9.5/10

Currently, I'm reading Neil Gaiman's graphic novel - Marvel 1602. I'm not that far into it, but my understanding is that it takes the most popular Marvel Comic characters from 1960's America and transplants them to the time of Queen Elizabeth in England. I don't always agree with Gaiman's content in his books (particularly The Sandman series) but there's no denying the man is incredibly well-read and can conjure up amazing ideas and premises from the strangest or most unlikely source-maerials. In that sense, he's a creative genius. Who else would take Marvel Comic characters and see what happened if they lived almost 400 years in the past? What would be the same? What would be different? Yes, it's a comic book but it's decidedly intelligent and very well-written. Not as ambitious as The Sandman series but still quite good (so far).

I really enjoyed the original Neil Gaiman Marvel 1602 comics, but I think the subsequent books set in that universe were not as good. Some fantastic ideas and new twists on the characters and events, but just not quite as good as what he wrote.

Bookwyrm, there are other Marvel 1602 comics? I didn't know that one. Weird. I imagine they wouldn't be as good if they weren't written by Neil Gaiman. Case in point: I recently read the graphic novel - Dead Boy Detectives. It takes one of the stories from The Sandman series and elaborates on the premise. It was a great idea but without Gaiman's involvement it just wasn't that good. Not terrible, but not Gaiman.

I think there are three or four additional volumes. One is about the Marvel 1602 version of Spider-Man and there's one about the Fantastic Four meeting the Atlanteans.