On The Hunt

 GOOD AFTERNOON to all my followers out there!!

First off as a little quick starter and hopefully something to brighten your day I will begin with 3 fun facts about censorship and banned books that I stumbled upon during my research:

1. “In the 1950’s, TV shows were not allowed to use the word “pregnant” as it was considered indecent.”
2. “The ‘Top’ Banned/Challenged Book from 2000-2009 was the entire Harry Potter series.”
3. “The first recorded book burning in the United States was in 1650.”

Now that we had some fun and increased our knowledge on censorship and banned books, I am going to describe my classes current project and experience. The Hunt , the title of this post, relates to the next task my fellow ULS (Underground Library Society) members and I have on our hands. As I mentioned in a previous post, my class and I have all chosen books that we want to save in a world where all books are banned. The book I have chosen to save is “Q & A” by Vikas Swarup. This is an amazing novel that intertwines an exciting and unique game show with insight into the poverty present in the Indian slums. This combination, in my opinion, is extremely powerful and captivates all of its readers making this book a necessary read. Now our next task, which I named The Hunt, is for our class to hide our own posters somewhere on the Lehigh University campus and our classmates must go on a scavenger hunt to find our classmates posters. I am on the lookout for secret ULS posters and will keep you informed on my findings !! 🙂

 

Have You Heard?!

CALLING ALL MY FOLLOWERS WHO CONSIDER THEMSELVES BOOK LOVERS! 

I am writing to explain to you an amazing secretive society that I have just recently become a member of… The Underground Library Society! The Underground Library Society’s main goal is to incentivize people to read more books by putting up posters made by hand shouting out a book they want to “save”. The ULS is an in class project my fellow students and I are working on together.

Our class is creating these posters that have the ULS name, a logo, the book we are “saving”, and a small quote or excerpt from the novel. I chose to do mine on Q & A by Vikas Swarup. I chose this novel due to its intriguing title and concept of a 10 question game show, but also because I believe the underlying message and descriptions of the poverty stricken areas of India are extremely important to understand. I believe this is a novel that needs to be read and can bring knowledge and pleasure unto its readers.

The ULS is based on a book Fahrenheit 451 we have read as a class. The novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury takes place in the Cold War and documents a fictional period where books are banned, leading a group of men to come together and memorize books to save written literature. The resilience and patience these men have to keep the books in their minds in order to one day release the knowledge upon the community amazes me. We as a class will move on to the second part of our project, memorizing a paragraph of our novel, once we have put up these posters on our novel. We, as a class, will simulate what Ray Bradbury imagined would happen in the future after the final pages of his book. The reveal and recitation of our novels.

Quick Hello!

(pixabay.com)

Hello! My name is Ellie Cordes and I am a freshman student at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I am studying in the School of Business and Economics for a Marketing and Finance double major. In my free time I play club field hockey and volunteer for the tutoring program at a local elementary and middle school.

I have created this blog for my English 002 class with Professor Charles F. French. I will be posting my opinions, reactions, and responses from our in and out of class work. The unit we are studying right now is Censorship. Censorship is an extremely interesting topic to delve into for this semester. We are focusing on banned books and the reasons behind the history of censorship all over the world.

This semester we are specifically focusing on two books titled, “Fahrenheit 451”‘ by Ray Bradbury and the Harry Potter book “Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling. I have never read either of these books but I am aware that they are well known books and I am excited to figure out why they were banned at one point in history. My hope for is for the readers to appreciate hearing my opinions and thoughts on censorship for the next few months. This is my first time creating a blog and I am very excited to start regularly posting!