Banned Books Week is Sept 21 thru 27, but I like to celebrate all month! Intellectual Freedom is important to me, as a reader and as a human.

Unfortunately, in other parts of the world, the fight for intellectual freedom is actualy a human rights issue. Journalist are kidnapped and killed too often: Committee to Protect Journalists: 711 Journalists Murdered since 1992

I've read 9 of the 46 books on the Banned Classics list. (the same as last year.)

5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
9. 1984, by George Orwell
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
57. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron

From the 2000-2009, Top 100 list: 13 books (two more than last year!)

4. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
8. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
17. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
23. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
26. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
36. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
69. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
74. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
80. A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck
88. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
90. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle

I am currently reading Maya Angelou's autobiography series, which begins with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings... her writing and her stories have me completely under their spell! I'm reading the 3rd book of 7.

From the wikipedia page about Maya Angelou:

Beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou used the same "writing ritual" for many years. She would wake early in the morning and check into a hotel room, where the staff was instructed to remove any pictures from the walls. She would write on legal pads while lying on the bed, with only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and would leave by the early afternoon. She would average 10 - 12 pages of written material a day, which she edited down to three or four pages in the evening. Angelou went through this process to "enchant" herself, and as she said in a 1989 interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive the agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang." She placed herself back in the time she wrote about, even traumatic experiences like her rape in Caged Bird, in order to "tell the human truth" about her life. Angelou stated that she played cards in order to get to that place of enchantment and in order to access her memories more effectively. She stated, "It may take an hour to get into it, but once I'm in it - ha! It's so delicious!" She did not find the process cathartic; rather, she found relief in "telling the truth".

Yes! I love to hear about other people's writing habits. Enchanting yourself with serious alone time, solitaire, sherry and a thesaurus?! how wonderful.

Static8 > Journal > 20 sept 2014

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