Banned Books Week Sep. 29 to Oct. 6

Celebrate your freedom to read.

Here is the American Library Association's list of 100 most frequently challenged books (1990–2000).

First 25 below.

1: Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2: Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4: The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7: Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8: Forever by Judy Blume
9: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10: Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11: Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12: My Brother Sam is Dead by James L. Collier & Christopher Collier
13: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14: The Giver by Lois Lowry
15: It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16: Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17: A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19: Sex by Madonna
20: Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21: The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
23: Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24: Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25: In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

Book Search Tips 1

Book Search Tips:

You can save money on shipping by buying more than one book from a bookseller.

You'd be surprised how many people don't realize that most booksellers offer a lower shipping cost for the second and third (and so on) book when ordering all together.

* To search our inventory on ABEbooks: From the search results screen, the book details screen or the Bookseller Information screen, simply click the [Search This Seller's Books or Browse This Seller's Books] link or button. This will take you to an Advanced Search screen for that particular Bookseller.

Grading Terms

A description of the grading terms used (with examples):

For paperbacks we use the following:

• FINE PLUS (FN + ) : As issued. The book is absolutely brand-new and perfect in every way.

• FINE (FN) : Very slight wear is beginning to show. Possibly a very faint or slight crease along the edge of the spine to indicate the book was carefully read once. No major signs of wear. Plastic lamination (if any) will be intact.

• FINE MINUS (FN - ) : Also known as Near Fine. May have been read carefully several times, but the spine will still be very clean although with a slightly more visible reading crease. There may be some very minor fading of the cover or spine. Still no stress lines on the spine. No creases or bends in the covers themselves. Pages will still be largely white or very slightly tanning. Lamination (if any) may be slightly chipped at the corners or other spots. Minor color flaking or minor rubbing noticeable on extremities. Still a very nice copy.

• VERY GOOD PLUS (VG + ) : A read copy, but very tight. Cover luster and gloss is showing slight wear but not gone. Slight bends and creases in cover. Pages are fresh, but mildly tanned. Stress lines on spine are noticeable, but not severe. Minor wear spots, chipping and rubbing. No tears or splits in spine.

• VERY GOOD (VG) : A read copy, but still fairly tight. Cover lustre and gloss is showing some wear but not gone. Plastic laminate (if any) is noticeably peeling in spots. Some bends and creases in the cover. Pages fairly fresh but tanning. Spine is bent from several readings but not broken or torn. Wear spots, chipping and rubbing is noticeable but not major. No tears in the spine and no tape repairs. Very minor nicks at some edges.

• VERY GOOD MINUS (VG - ) : The average copy but still complete with no pages missing. Cover has slight bends, creases, and is starting to fade. Minor spine tear, not more than a quarter inch, but still intact on either end. Very slight roll to spine is possible. Minor nicks could be present on some pages. No pieces of cover missing.

• GOOD PLUS (G + ) : A read copy. Complete and readable. Small tears in cover or pages (at edges) is likely. Roll to spine is possible. Spine may be loose with tears (no more than quarter inch) on either end. Stamps or writing in book is possible. Cover has noticeable bends, creases, and could be slightly faded. Possible price sticker damage on cover.

• GOOD (G) : Your average read copy. Possibly slightly soiled, but still complete and readable. Torn cover or pages (no more than half an inch) is likely, as is a rolled spine. Spine heavily creased with possible small (no more than half inch) pieces missing from each end. Could have tears at top and bottom of spine. Stamps or writing in book is possible.

• GOOD Minus (G - ) : Your very well-read copy. Possibly slightly soiled, but still complete and readable. Torn cover or pages (no more than half an inch) is likely, as is a rolled spine. Spine heavily creased with possible small (no more than half inch) pieces missing from each end. Could have tears at top and bottom of spine. Stamps or writing in book is possible. Interior loose pages likely. Beginning spine crack.

• Fair (FR) : This is a reading copy only and is the minimal rating we will sell or buy. Book is readable.

For hard-covers, we use the IOBA standard.

For comic books, we use the Overstreet standard.

The Sword, The Scalpel – The Story of Dr. Norman Bethune by Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon. A review.

Norman Bethune is still a hero to many Canadians and non-Canadians, especially in China where he spent the last years of his life in Mao’s fight against the Japanese, Chinese imperialists and capitalists. Socialists, medical professionals and many Montréalers (where he spent a good part of his life as chief of thoracic surgery at Ste. Justine Hospital) revere Bethune as a noble doctor who helped the underprivileged. His many exploits of genius, from designing better surgical tools to inventing the modern mobile medical unit used in wars since 1939, have made him a Canadian to be proud of. His almost single-handed and constant fight against tuberculosis alone (which he himself suffered from), would make him a great humanitarian.

Which makes it all the more unfortunate that Ted Allan and Sydney Gordon’s biography has two things (among many) that hinder our understanding and appreciation of this man: The book is more propaganda than art which serves to make a truly great man somehow less and the information gathered and given to the reader is subsumed by the authors’ agenda in pushing a particular point of view, that of the glorious communist future awaiting us. The book is more hagiography than biography.

Now, I don’t have an issue with a socialist or communist ideologist attempting to convince us of the greatness of that way of life, but the effect of items such as getting to age 34 of his life by page 20 of a 319 page book, but writing with great heavy-handed detail on his death, to the extent that we know the exact time of his passing and the exact words spoken by those around him full of camaraderie and brotherhood, is to feel like we are being beaten over the head. Yes, we know that all the communists fighting in Mao’s army were really, really hard-working and never complained about their lot because they believed in the brotherhood of man. Enough already.

Those looking for an in depth analyses of Bethune’s early childhood and formative experiences should look elsewhere. For example, where did Bethune get such a single-minded ability to focus and his zeal for causes? We are given scant information on his parents; his father was a minister and his mother a missionary is basically all we’re told. A proper biography would have explored his upbringing and relationship to his parents to bring into focus his later stubbornness and attachment to causes. The authors write of Bethune’s “idealism of adolescence” but try as I might, I can not find any reference to his adolescence as Bethune’s teen-age years don’t even rate a sentence.

Bethune joined the Canadian armed forces the day World War 1 begun. He spent time at the front and was wounded at Ypres where many Canadian historians note that "Canada was truly born as a nation". Surely such a horrendous experience would make some sort of impression and help us to understand his later hatred of unworthy causes. After all, many post-war writers, the Lost Generation as Gertrude Stein called them, felt such deep scars that they wrote and drank and talked in some fashion about their experiences for the rest of their lives. These authors see fit to give us exactly one page on Bethune and the First World War.

The propensity to propaganda comes early in the book. We are told that Bethune’s decision to start his first medical practice in Detroit is partly because “America was rich, and a great torrent of its riches washed through Detroit…There, he told himself, he would have to kiss no one’s hand, bend the knee to no British upper-class dowager…” There is nothing inherently wrong with this statement except that we haven’t been given a proper explanation or set-up before hand to tell us why he felt he had to “bend his knee”. In the paragraphs preceding this statement we are told he is living the good life and quite enjoying it. We are told of his jaunts in London, Paris and Italy, carousing and carrying-on like any young man at the time. He seems to be happy. Where did he get the feeling he was “bending the knee” while drinking in London pubs or picking up girls in Parisian cafes? Approximately 2 pages later we are told that money no longer satisfies him, he needs to be able to be the “old” Bethune, healing the poor with no thought to monetary reward. Unfortunately the authors have already made him out to be a bit of a spoiled rich kid…how many of us get to go to medical school in England and Italy and squander the money sent by his parents on drinks and food. At least make the propaganda a little more subtle guys!

Now I know this book was written in 1952 during a time of Communist witch-hunts and paranoia so maybe the message had to be heavy-handed but it doesn’t excuse sloppy writing. The move from self-serving to self-sacrificing young doctor is unclear and one of the problems I think is that both authors knew Bethune and the only detailed biographical information we get comes in the years that Allan and Gordon had dealings with their subject.

I had seen the Donald Sutherland movie (Bethune – The Making of a Hero) many years ago and the only part that made an impression on me was when Sutherland, playing Bethune, collapses his own lung in order to stave off or cure the effects of tuberculosis. My thoughts at the time were, my god, what absolute balls does it take to be able to operate on yourself and is this what Bethune really did or did the film makers take the hero title a little too seriously.

I bought Bethune’s biography soon after to confirm for myself. Although Bethune never actually collapsed his own lung, this biography would have us believe that this medical genius, inventor and communist was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The sainthood attributed to Bethune sometimes so far outweighs the often truly astonishing things he has done, that this biography makes the man Bethune much less real and the story of his life, ironically, much less interesting.

Quote - Charles Baudelaire

"Et, comme le soleil dans son enfer polaire,
Mon coeur sera plus qu'un bloc rouge et glace."

From: Chant D'Automne by Charles Baudelaire.

Quote - Nikos Kazantzakis

"We call nonexistant that which we do not desire."

Columbus to Isabella.

From the play Christopher Columbus in the collection Three Plays by Nikos Kazantzakis. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969 - page 65.

Quote - J.G. Ballard

"In a sense, we’re policing ourselves and that’s the ultimate police state, where people are terrified of challenge."

J.G. Ballard from an interview in the summer of 1997.

Reading Camus

Albert Camus' L'Etranger.

I always read this in the autumn, just as the children are heading back to school.

This might seem odd because the book mostly takes place in the hot Algerian summer, but this novel reminds me of French class in grade 11 where the teacher introduced me to this classic of existentialist writings. Although I now understand that Camus himself would have given it another label, absurdist perhaps, reading the novel always takes me back to being young and impressionable to outsiders and writings about outsiders.

Thesiger : My Life And Travels - A Review.

There are passages in Wilfred Thesiger's book, My Life & Travels, An Anthology , where I often wondered what I would do in his position. Whether facing wild animals with a single bullet left, or traveling with companions in unsafe regions, who were revealed to be outlaws; what would I do?

The answer is simple. I wouldn't have been there in the first place.

And that is also the one simple reason to read this anthology of Thesiger's travel writings. He has traveled like the great explorers of the 19th century, mostly on his own two feet, in inhospitable yet breathtaking lands and written about both the discomfort and beauty in the same upper-class, British, dry, understated way that by implication gets your heart racing.

His meticulous and dreary counting of bedbugs (there were sixty) while in Iraq show a perverse, and dare I say it, mad dogs and Englishmen sort of stiff upper lip that both attracts and repulses at the same time. The reader thinks, why didn't he just go sleep somewhere else? Well, because then he might not have an amusing and strange event to write about.

His nonchalant recounting of a beating he received in Africa makes one wonder if he isn't going too far in recounting obviously painful memories. He writes about the violence that "it is not something to be repeated". Unless you're at the club old chap.

Although the dry writing can be off-putting, the description of lands now forever changed by the inhabitants and other invaders and the toils made to get there are enough of an invitation to get the reader going.

Thinking About Hemingway

Reading A Farewel To Arms recently, I started thinking about Hemingway the man and his relation to the stories he wrote.

The stories would seemingly concern themselves with decay which most associate with the fall or winter but I always read these in the spring as it brings me closer to the Michigan forests and Spanish cafes of the book.

His short story collection also helps me to understand the expression "hide in plain sight" as it seems to me that that was what Hemingway was doing in these stories.

Scratch a little on the surface of the hunting expeditions and you may find the wounded boy underneath.

Quote - Robertson Davies

"Don't you know what fanatacism is? It is overcompensation for doubt."

The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy) by Robertson Davies - p. 435 - Penguin Books 1990, 14th printing.

Welcome !

Welcome to the Easy Fun Books (EF Books) blog.

This is the place where we will post reviews of books and music, quotes from authors, thoughts on a variety of subjects, and anything else that catches our fancy.

Join us in our journey together.

And thank you.

Emilia & George
Easy & Fun Books