10 Brilliant Writers Robbed of a Nobel

10 Brilliant Writers Robbed of a Nobel Prize

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Banned Books Week: A Quiz

The American Library Association recognizes Banned Books Week — and this year, Banned Books Week is September 26 through October 3.

So, let's test your banned books knowledge.

The quotes below were taken from among the 20 books listed at the end of this entry. Can you match the quote to its book?

Submit your answers by October 5, 2009 via e-mail (see "Contact us," right), and I will choose one person from among those who have submitted the highest number of correct answers.

The winner will receive a banned book from The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books List, 1990-99.

Good luck!


The Quotes
1. How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.

2. It is like the hole in your mouth where a tooth was and you cannot keep your tongue from playing with it.

3. “I believe that love is better than hate. And that there is more nobility in building a chicken coop than destroying a cathedral.”

4. He was seething inside with new emotion. Nothing seemed very important except the Princess. He was single-minded about her. He was enchanted. He was possessed. He was in love

5. I'd soon as go to jail than take that damn relief job.

6. Last night while I lay thinking here
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:

7. It had been all right as long as they could laugh at me and appear clever at my expense, but now they were feeling inferior to the moron. I began to see that by my astonishing growth I had made them shrink and emphasized their inadequacies.

8. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corn cribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

9. My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

10. "She won't be coming down here with the spray. She'll be coming down here with a shovel. It happened to my brother. Split him right down the middle. Now I have two half-brothers."

11. We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren't looking, and touch each other's hands across space. We learned to lipread, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way, we exchanged names, from bed to bed: Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.

12. I expected Daddy to explain everything on the way home—all that stuff Dr. Griffith had been talking about—that I didn't understand. Instead, he and Ma argued about whose fault it was that I have something wrong with my spine until we pulled into the driveway. It was almost as if they'd forgotten I was there.

13. I was getting to where I could see the truth. Someday I'll be brave enough to speak it.

The quotes above were taken from 13 of these challenged books:

• Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
• Beloved
• The Catcher in the Rye
• The Chocolate War
• Deenie
• Flowers for Algernon
• The Giver
• The Handmaid's Tale
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
• James and the Giant Peach
• A Light in the Attic
• Native Son
• Ordinary People
• The Outsiders
• Pillars of the Earth
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• A Wrinkle in Time

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society — Review by Chris

I like a good story. I also like fascinating characters who reveal the story in interesting ways. I got both in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a surprisingly powerful yet compact novel that captured me by the third letter.

Juliet is best known for her wartime columns in London newspapers. As "Izzy," the writer found something light in the dark and shared her own poignant, humorous ponderings. But now the war is over and Juliet wants to leave Izzy in the past. It's time for the Next Thing — only she's not sure what that is. She owes her publisher a new book, but she's stymied on what to write. Nothing feels right, nothing sounds true.

Then she receives a letter from a stranger who has come to own a book that used to belong to her. Could she recommend a reputable bookseller to help him discover Charles Lamb? Thus begins a special correspondence that changes her life.

The letter comes from a resident of Guernsey, an island in the English Channel that, like the other channel islands, were occupied by the Germans. The occupation began in 1940, and the islanders were literally cut off from the rest of the world until the end of the war: no correspondence, no radio, no newspapers, no contact at all. Their food, homes, their every possession became the property of their prison guards. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was borne of this oppression — and the existence of a single pig.

The slim volume unfolds the story in the form of correspondence: letters, cables — and, in one instance, something meant never to be seen by another person, ever. Juliet is the main character, and much of the correspondence is written by or received by her. However, the same situation is, from time to time, witnessed by and described by different people — like the time Juliet throws a teapot at another journalist's head. (He deserved it.)

I love Juliet. Wait, let me reiterate: I. Love. Juliet. She is lively, loving, clever, self-deprecating and wholly unaware of how utterly special she is. In other words, she is human. She writes some of the best, loveliest and wittiest lines of the novel. It is the margin notes in a pamphlet Juliet once owned that draw the original letter-writer to her.

I also loved how the story unfolded, letter by letter. Each letter-writer has a distinct voice that remains true. Each character is essential to the story, which unfolds to me a rich, new aspect of World War II. I was unaware of the occupation of the Channel Islands, or the existence of the Organisation Todt. I knew some urban dwellers sent their children to live in the English countryside with strangers (thanks to C.S. Lewis, I confess), but I didn't know that Channel Islanders also sent their children to the English countryside, then lost contact with them for five long years. I didn't know the first thing of being trapped on an island, subject to the whim of the Third Reich, when Churchill and the Crown considered the islands a necessary sacrifice for the whole of England. Despite all of this learning, never once does this feel like A History Lesson. It is the story of people, and the people are fascinating, even (and especially) the ones readers may not like.

I wholeheartedly recommend this modest tome and hope you enjoy the characters and their story as much as I did.