Reading lists and banned books

August 30, 2009

While we were both in college David was the person who told me to read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Knowing him, he probably gave me my copy. In fact, I usually relied on him for my (summer) reading lists, since I was a Biology major with little exposure on my own to new literature. I also read a series of banned books - another David subject, probably because many of his favorite authors would appear on lists of banned books (Miller, Vonnegut, etc.). I remember we followed closely the case of Island Trees - a town on LI with an odd name that I'm sure thrilled David - which lost the right to ban books from school libraries in the Supreme Court. This gave me a new reading list. (I've just looked at the list online:
http://justlists.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/11-banned-books-in-island-trees-v-pico-1982/ - and see that I probably read half these due to the case).

Nowadays my wife has taken over most of the position of literature suggester while David remains principle culture culturer. This Spring that David loaned me his copy of Watchmen to read - in advance of the movie version. I finally saw the movie on DVD about 3 weeks ago.

Dave Ruderman