Dystopian Society Novels and Banned Books?

I'm just going to warn you in advance that this might be a little controversial. So if you don't like that, don't read on. Okay? Consider yourself warned.

As I was at a swim meet today and didn't actually have time to write much of anything as far as my own fiction goes, I'll be talking a little about books again. Some of my favorite novels have been the dystopian books, like Orwell's 1984 or Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies by Golding. Oddly enough, according to the list of banned books and authors, many authors of these novels (and other such excellent novels) either are or have been banned for some reason in some place around the USA. In fact, some of these have been required reading for school classes.

As an author, I don't necessarily invite debate into what I write, but I don't shy away from plot points just because they could be touchy subjects. Most of my characters tend not to swear too much (one of the main themes I've noticed in the "banned books" list) and I don't write past PG-13. My plot lines have elements of dystopian societies in them (or at least Once Upon an Alternate Universe will - think weird combination of influence from The Phantom Tollbooth, Animal Farm or just about any other dystopian society idea and CS Lewis - just because his writing is made of pure awesomeness and he's one of my favorite all time authors - and you'll be spot on). But I digress.

Honestly, if you don't want to read a certain book, no one is forcing you to read them. I don't think they should require such authors to always be read for school... we seemed to read an abundance of the dystopian and other weird books in high school English classes (but Edgar Allen Poe's stuff was freakier than anything like Animal Farm or Farenheit 451!)... and parents should be cautioned before letting their kids read whatever they want (except for Tetsuya Takahashi because he doesn't care what Emiko does). But books shouldn't be banned from public libraries just because of controversial issues; people just need to be aware of what they read.

Any thoughts?

Christmas Stories

Holiday Stories. We love 'em, hate 'em, but the holidays wouldn't be the same without them... so here are a few I've encountered.

Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck. This story is about an elderly man reflecting back on his teenage years on Christmas morning. At our dormitory Christmas party on Friday, it was read to us.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (in my opinion, one of his two decent works) is one of my favorite Christmas stories. I don't know how many times it's been parodied, but one of my favorite holiday memories was from when we went on a class field trip to the City and we got to see this performed live. That was truly a treat.
The Gift of the Magi by O'Henry has always been one of my favorites.

Here are two Christmas/holiday stories I've written...
A Midwinter's Eve: a LotR fanfiction based around Elrond, Legolas and other characters in JRR Tolkien's Universe. Rated G. Written in 2005. General holiday theme, as I don't think they have Christmas in Middle-earth.
A Christmas to Remember: An untimely snowstorm (snow in California?) traps Michael, Scott, Sam and the others at the church during rehearsal for the Christmas play. Other characters include Sharpe, Natalia and Ellie Johnson, Alton and all the church kids. Written in December of 2006. Rated G, but explicitly religious.

So now you have five holiday themed stories you can go read. I'm sorry that (with the exception of A Midwinter's Eve) they're all Christmas oriented. I just don't know of any good Kwanzaa or Hanukkah stories to share with you guys.

OT: Book Suggestions?

I know I should really be doing homework or something else right now, but I wanted to put this out there before I forgot. If anyone has any good book suggestions, I'm much in need of a good one. I've put Othello (Shakespeare) down for quite awhile and I don't think I shall be resuming it any time soon.

Points to Consider:

• Good characters
• Plot that involves mostly action, adventure, suspense, thriller.
• Possibly some romance, but not too much.
• I don't like reading stuff with graphic sex, drugs, violence, language, etc. In other words, probably nothing worse than PG-13...
  
• Something in the tradition of Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo) would be nice.
• I love the classics, but I also enjoy suspense-thrillers. ^_^
  

If you guys have any book suggestions, that would be muchly appreciated. I've been meaning to try to get my hands on a copy of George MacDonald's Phantasties, but haven't been able to. Which is rather unfortunate, if you ask me, but it's life.

To Learn by Reading

To be a good writer, one has to learn not only by writing, but also by reading. Eventually (once school settles down - haha), I'll probably get around to talking about some of my favorite books and authors here and what I do and don't like about those books. Despite my abhorrence for unnecessary character death, I still enjoy reading the works of William Shakespeare. In case anyone was wondering, CS Lewis is probably my all-time favorite author.

Things I Enjoy in Books:

• Good characters. A book has to have decent characters for the book to be good. As CS Lewis remarked, "we read to know we're not alone" and through the characters of a book, an author can speak to us in ways he or she wouldn't be able to otherwise.
  
• A halfway decent plotline. The more complex the plotline, the better. As a writer, I love making complex lines and intricate threads for characters to follow and I appreciate an author who can do the same and do it well. This is where I especially love the works of JRR Tolkien.
• Believability of a world. It doesn't matter whether it's real (The Andromeda Strain) or historical (Pride and Prejudice or The Three Musketeers) or made-up (Lord of the Rings or Narnia), but the world has to be written well and believable. One thing that I really love about Tolkien is that he goes through all the trouble of making up the languages (okay, so he really loved that stuff) and the races and the stories were just a product of people seeing what he'd done and asking him to write. In creating a different universe, you almost have to do all the background work before writing all about the characters or you'll have a lot of gaps. Trust me... I know from experience.
• I love it when authors think of clever allegorical references or symbolism or interesting names that actually apply to their characters somehow. For example, in CS Lewis' Narnia series, Aslan is Turkish for lion. Quite suiting, considering the fact that he is the Lion. Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is frequently characterized by being tall, dark and handsome. Darcy means dark. Pretty interesting if you ask me... and I'm sure there are other authors who do this; I'm just not sure of any others at the moment.
  

Things That Are Major Pet Peeves in Books:

• Unnecessary character death. Mr. Shakespeare, anyone? Need I say more? Actually, I do like Shakespeare... I just see it as unnecessary to kill off characters without a good reason.
• When authors don't check their facts or make things realistic based on what universe they're operating in. Take The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (scroll down between half and two-thirds way for the part I'm talking about), for example... excellent book and it was written well overall. Unfortunately, I have a knack for random facts that'll only be useful if I happen to get asked to appear on Jeopardy.
• Weak female characters, especially if all the main characters are female and they're all weak. I love the strong female character, like Eowyn from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
• This applies more to fan-fiction and short stories that people write and share online, but I really dislike it when they don't include warnings. If you're going to write romance (whether it's slash or non-slash and especially intense romance), please warn us. Same thing with language, etc.

I suppose that's all I have for now. I enjoyed taking a little bit of time out of my busy studying schedule to write this up and organize my thoughts into a somewhat coherent thought pattern before I go off to eat something for dinner and do more homework.

Hoorah for homework and studying! No really. Oh, this is the site I found the name information from.