Imagine a world without great classic books like 1984, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Flies or even The Lord of the Rings. Well, it has happened at one point or another. Each of these books have been banned at some time, mostly in America though.

Google Books is promoting a list of banned books for Banned Books week. If you're curious as to why some of these were banned, check out the explanations provided for 42 of them.

Now it's perfectly understandable for some of the books to be banned at the time they were released, for example Lady Chatterley's Lover, (I'm sure we can all work out why this one was banned - if you don't know, read it, or if you're not the reading type, watch The Chatterley Affair which acurately details the obscenity court case brought again's Penguin books for this book) but others are just people being over-sensitive.

I think I've got to get reading, just in case some over-sensitive fool wants to ban some of these classics again.