With so much going on recently, our banned books project has gotten off schedule – but we are getting caught up today with Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle – and y’all, this was a -10/10, do not recommend, rough go situation.

Getting right to the point, I found the novel itself to be a terrible read, miserable and overdone – *however* it is historically significant in that its publication in 1906 would lead President Theodore Roosevelt and his Labor Board, responding to public outcry, to begin investigating meat packing plants – and to uncover terrible and unsanitary conditions therein.

These discoveries would bring about the passage of the Pure Drug and Food Act – which would ultimately establish the modern-day Food and Drug Administration.

While that is certainly a significant accomplishment from a historical standpoint, it does not make this piece a literary classic.

The writing is truly terrible, y’all.

Still, again, this is our banned books project – and, as always, it is your right to read it for yourself and decide.

(I, however, am so happy to be on to Lisa-Marie’s autobiography now as well as having a few other books I want to discuss before next week’s banned book. ❤ )

Wishing you all a great week and happy reading.

Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Grace and Blessings.

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Awakening – Kate Chopin

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence

Animal Farm – George Orwell

1984 – George Orwell

Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

A Separate Peace – John Knowles

Lolita – Vladmir Nabokov

A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner

LOTR – The Fellowship of The Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien

LOTR – The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien

LOTR – The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien

Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey

Beloved – Toni Morrison

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

The Call of the Wild – Jack London

Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin

Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence

Ulysses – James Joyce

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

Naked Lunch – William Burroughs

The Satanic Verses (substitute Knife) – Salman Rushdie

The Jungle – Upton Sinclair