THE RANDOM QUESTION TAG

(I'm so terribly behind on tags and what not.  Sorry!  Midterms are insane at the moment.  I'm going to try and catch up with everything this week.)

I was tagged by the lovely Gloria over at GloriaTheViolinist who has also answered these questions here. Be sure to check her out!  Thank you for the tag!  In this tag, I will be answering 18 random questions.

1. Have you ever thrown a book?
Yep.  And not only have I thrown a book, I've thrown my Kindle, too! (Onto my bed, but still.)

2. Do you like lengthy books or short books?
Depends on how engaging a story is, but in general succinct and straight-to-the-point books are great for me in literary fictions and longer, more descriptive books are better in fantasy.

3. If you don't like a book, do you stop reading it or finish it?
In general, I finish it because I'm probably going to deconstruct the heck out of it and have so much fun.  But there have been a few times where I just couldn't finish a book.  Most of the time, if I can't finish it, it's because there's no deeper meaning to be found that I could agree or disagree with.

4. Do you stop reading when you're tired or when a chapter finishes?
I stop reading when I pass out. I don't even close the book, I legit just pass out mid-sentence.
  
5. How do you organize your shelf?
By genre.

6. Paperback or Hardcover?
Paperback.  Cheaper, easier to read and I love writing in the margins.

7. What book can you not wait to read?
Anything for fun.  Uni is sucking out my soul.

8. A book you wish could be turned into a graphic novel?
Not sure I want any of them to be... unless it's done by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.  Maybe Good Omens.  Does that already exist? 

9. A book that disappointed you?
Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas and Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas.  Literally for the exact same reason.

10. What book made you cry recently?
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs.  It's her account of being a slave and there's a part where she teaches another slave to read so that he could read the Bible.  I'm not even a Christian, but his will to learn and devotion to God were so beautiful to read about that I just started tearing up.  To love something so strongly is beautiful.

11. Do you prefer buying books online or going to the bookstore?
Going to the bookstore.  It's like coming home.

12. Do you prefer to listen to music while reading or to read in silence?
Read in silence.  I wish I could listen to music while I read, but I'm too easily distracted.

13. What is the weirdest thing you've ever experienced while reading a book?
Not sure I've ever experienced anything weird... but I did read in the Louvre, right outside the Mona Lisa.  -toots horn-

14. What was your first fandom?
Kingdom Hearts!

15. What fictional character do you relate to the most?
Lizzie Bennett and Lydia Bennett.  Lizzie because I'm bold (maybe too bold), enjoy talking with people and being witty and can handle myself.  Lydia because I can be quite silly and ridiculous, but I have the advantage of having good parents.  Honestly, if Lydia had had parents that actually cared about her and took care of her, she would not have turned out as she did.  I really think Mr. Bennett is one of the worst literary parents of all time.

16. What fictional character do you wish you were more like?
I like myself as I am, to be honest, lol.  I do wish I had Tyrion Lannister's eye for strategy, though.  I bet he's good at math.  I wish I were good at math. *sighs deeply*

17. If you could spend a whole day with five characters, who would you pick?
Tyrion Lannister,  Frederick Douglass (he counts because he wrote a book about himself so he made himself a character), Harriet Jacobs, Keenan and Seth from Wicked Lovely.

18. What is a book that exceeded all of your expectations?
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  Wow, what a seriously beautiful book!

I'm not sure who has done this tag, so I'm hesitantly tagging:

Morrighan @ Elysian Fields

Ana @ Tara! Let's be happy

Noelia @ A Day in Bookland

Lola @ Hit or Miss Books

Giselle @ Perks of Being Readers

The Misses @ Fangirling Misses

John Milton, Censorship, and the Murder of Reason. #BannedBooksWeek

In honor of #BannedBooksWeek, I figured I definitely needed to make a post on the horrors of censorship and how it limits intellectual growth.  Over the years, various governments, usually those based in religion, have banned books that they think have an agenda against their own.  Normally, these books do have a different point of view, but that is what makes them great.

I recently read John Milton's Areopagitica.  This essay is an appeal to the Papacy to drop the legislative censorship act that they had just put into motion.  It's a selfish piece.  Milton was viewed as heretic by many church members and he was afraid of his work being censored or unpublished.  However, regardless of his intention in writing it, the meaning inside of it is relevant: you need to read all kinds of books to decide what you think is right or wrong and you should never be limited in your intellectual - and ultimately moral - journey.

For Milton, books are not just things we passively observe.  They are active, alive beings that we must consume.  The more we consume, the more we can figure out our personal ethos and the more we will be able to see right from wrong.  If books that are deemed wrong by "tyranny and susperstition"* then members of society who can read will all begin to think the same, and in thinking the same there can never be any change.

I've pulled a few quotes for you that resonating strongly with me, as a reader:

"...for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."

"... as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself..."

Killing a book is worse than killing a human being in the eyes of Milton because you are killing the living essence of reason.  Censorship is the act of killing reason.

I thought it would be good to look three banned books and explain why they were banned:

 Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Why was it banned?: It was banned because it went against "public morals" due to the wife taking on a lover while she was married.**  Although books with men taking female lovers haven't seemed to have ever been banned.

1984 by George Orwell

Why was it banned?: It was banned by the USSR because Stalin recognized it as a satire on his leadership.  He didn't want a revolution to take place.  The US almost banned this book as well during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Why was it banned?: It was banned due to the racial slurs, profanity, rape and other unpleasant images in the novel.  It is still one of the most challenged novels in schools today.

I chose these three books to focus on because I wanted to point out why different books are banned.  A woman taking control of her sexuality is scary and must be banned.  The people realizing how terrible their government is and being incited to revolution is scary and must be banned.  Racial slurs, rape, etc. is offensive and must be banned.  And these things must be banned even if the larger message, like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, is actually anti-racism.  The books must be banned even if their message is one of the most revolutionary ones of history, because it contains "dirty words."  

Establishments will come up with any reason to ban a book, whether it be for sexual, religious or political reasons.  They will mask these reasons by trying to tell you that banning these books is "good for you" and "protecting your innocence."  But it's not.  It's good for them, not for you, and the act of censorship will never be beneficial to the individual.  Of course, you can run the risk of being "contaminated," and beginning to think in a more violent way, for example, but that is where Milton's personal ethos comes into play: that we must read as much as possible, see the reactions and the failures in history and literature, to grow and expand as a people.  As readers, and as people, I hope we will continue to fight for our literary freedom.

* All quotes by Milton come from the Oxford World's Classics John Milton: The Major Works.

** Information comes from Wikipedia and Bannedbooks.world.

August Wrap Up + September TBR

August turned out to be a decent month for reading.  I read a lot of the books that I planned on reading and finally got started on the Percy Jackson series!  I have been meaning to pick these books up forever so I can finally understand what all of the hype is about.  I plowed through the first two and plan on finishing the series itself by October.

If you click on any of the titles listed below, you will be taken to Goodreads so that you can read a description of the novel.

Books I read:

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Just One Day by Gayle Forman

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss

Audiobooks I listened to:

In the After by Demetria Lunetta

Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

One Foot in the Grave by Jeaniene Frost

At Grave's End by Jeaniene Frost

Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen

Unfortunately, this is where it all slows down.  University has officially started and considering my major is Literature, the majority of my reading will have to be devoted to my classes.  The good news is that this is my last semester.  The bad news is that it means I had to jam pack four high level lit courses into one semester.  I'm prepared to be sinking in papers by the time September rolls to an end.

For school:

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano

Lilus Kikus and Other Stories by Elena Poniatowska

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by Ellen and William Craft

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

For fun:

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Commanded to his Bed by Denise Lynn

Rumble by Ellen Hopkins

Audiobooks:

In the End by Demitria Lunetta

True to the Highlander by Barbara Longley 

The Neon Rain by James Burke

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson

Timebound by Rysa Walker

My drive to and from school takes me at least an hour every day, so I always seem to have ample time to listen to audiobooks, which is why I'm comfortable putting five here.  As for the ones I'm reading for fun, two are for the Vaginal Fantasy Book Club, two are for the BOOKSPLOSION book club and one is my Bathroom Book of the Month, which I'll write more about later.