Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
If you have been following along with this podcast, you know that I am a big proponent of input.
Input is the amount of time you spend reading or listening to a language when you are trying to learn it.
I have talked in the past about Steve Kaufman and Steven Krashen.
I'll leave a link up here in the iCard so you can check out those episodes.
But both of those people are polyglots, which means that they speak multiple languages.
Steven Krashen is a linguist who has studied how people acquire languages, and his research has shown that the more you read a language, the better you are at speaking that language.
The better you are with that language, in general.
Because of that, I think input is extremely important.
I teach English online to students who are learning it as a second language, and I tell them all the time to try to read as much as possible.
Here in the United States, this week is Band Book Week.
Band Book Week celebrates books that have been banned or prevented from being in libraries.
Books that people did not want other people to read because of some controversial content they have.
So, to celebrate Band Book Week, on this episode, I wanted to talk about some banned books that you could read to help improve your English abilities.
We're going to talk about these books, why they're banned, and why you should read them to help improve your English.
If you're interested in learning about these banned books, if you're interested in being a little bit rebellious and celebrating Band Book Week, then follow along because we're about to begin.
A quick reminder before we get started to look at the description in this podcast episode for the vocabulary list.
This is a list of the words and phrases that I use in the episode, so you can refer to them, take them, put them in your own vocabulary learning system, and eventually start using them in conversation yourself.
If you're watching on YouTube, I'm also going to put a link in the iCard to a previous episode that I did.
I did an entire episode on how to use reading to improve your English.
So, if you're unsure about how to use reading, how to read efficiently, and how to use reading to increase your English abilities, then you can check out that episode.
I would recommend it so you can learn how to put reading into your study plan and have it become part of your English learning journey.
Another thing that I want to mention is that a lot of these books have been turned into movies.
I'm going to leave a link to two different websites.
I am not paid by these websites.
I have no affiliation with them, but they are websites that I personally use.
The websites are just watch .com and watchany .stream.
These are two websites that you can use.
You can put the name of the movie or TV show into the search, and it will tell you if that particular content, that movie or TV show, is available in your country and on what streaming platform.
So, I use this when I want to watch something, I'll put it into the search, and it tells me if it's available in streaming and on what platform.
That way I can see if I can watch it or not.
If you're interested in watching the movie version of these books, you can use them and see if it's available in whatever country you are in.
Now, a little bit about how we're going to organize this list.
I'm going to start with the books that are at the lowest English level, and then we're going to progress up.
So, the first book is going to be the easiest.
The last book is going to be the most native, the most challenging.
That way you can determine where you are for your English level and see what book would be most appropriate for you.
The book that is the easiest, the book that is at the lowest level and that we're going to start with, is Charlotte's Web.
Charlotte's Web was written in 1952 by E .B.
White, and it is at a B1 to B2 level of English.
So, that is at an intermediate range.
If you are at an intermediate range for English, especially for reading, this could be a great book for you.
The book is more of a children's book, which is why it's at a lower level.
I would say people here in the United States usually read this book at around age 8 to 10, so it is a little bit more simplified.
But the story is about a pig named Wilbur.
Wilbur is born on a farm, and he is the smallest out of the pigs who were born there, and he becomes friends with a girl who lives on that farm.
So, she sends him to her uncle's farm.
At her uncle's farm, he meets other animals.
He meets a whole cast of animals, and one of the creatures that lives on the farm is a spider named Charlotte.
Charlotte uses her web to continue to save Wilbur, so he does not get turned into food, and he gets to have this wonderful adventure living on the farm with these other animals.
The animals talk to each other, they have little adventures together, and it's just a very sweet story.
It's probably one of the reasons why I am still vegetarian, because it's just this really sweet story, and you don't want these animals to get killed.
You don't want anyone to end up eating them.
The story also has a little bit of a tragic ending, a really sad but also slightly hopeful ending.
And if you have read the book, or if you've seen the movies, you know what it is.
I'm not going to spoil it here, but it is a children's book, but it really has the sweet theme, but also the thought -provoking theme.
The ending of it has this really, we call, bitter sweet ending where it's sad but also slightly hopeful both at the same time, and it's an impactful ending.
If you are interested in reading it, of course you can read it.
There are also two different movie versions.
There's an animated version, and there's a live -action version with a young Dakota fanning from a number of years ago.
So if you're interested, there are two movie versions as well.
Now, the reason why this book was banned is that here in the United States, the United States has a history and a culture of being a very conservative Christian ideology.
There's a lot of people who came to the United States, who founded the United States, who were very conservative Christians, and that thought process, that ideology, that culture continued on, and even today is still continuing on.
There's a lot of people who still want to ban books in conservative states.
Because this book had talking animals, it was banned.
Conservative Christians did not like the idea that animals could talk, that they could act like humans, that they had thoughts and brains, and so this book was challenged and this book was banned at different points in time.
Nowadays, it's definitely considered to be a classic book.
A lot of people read this book.
I read this book. A lot of people read this book.
It is one of those classic children's books, but in history it has been banned before.
If you're interested in reading it, like I said, it is at an intermediate level.
It has this really sweet storyline.
It has illustrations.
It's not very long.
So if you're interested in reading it, it could be a great resource for you.
The next book, or I should say series of books, is the Harry Potter series.
Now, I know, I know a lot of people have already read them.
A lot of people have watched the movies.
They're extremely popular and maybe it's not a new recommendation, but the reason it's on this list is because it is a series of books.
There are seven books and the books are pretty long, so if you're interested in reading them, there's a lot of material there for you.
Other really big reason I put it on this list is that the books are progressive with their level.
That means that the first book is the simplest to read.
It is targeted for someone who has a lower reading level and then each book progresses with its level.
The first books in the series, probably the first three, are at that B1 to B2 range, at intermediate level, and then the later books are at a B2 to C1 level more advanced.
If you start with the first book and if you're at a lower English level, you can progress with the books.
As your reading level increases, you're going to those additional books and it really is a kind of built -in system for someone who's trying to learn English.
Now, of course, these weren't written for native speakers.
It's not written for people who are trying to learn English, but that progression is really nice because it is something that you can use.
If you are trying to increase your English level, you can start with the easier books and work your way up.
That's a really great resource to have.
Of course, if you know the stories, you know that there's movies and you know that the whole storyline is about Harry Potter.
There's wizards, there's witches, there's magic, there's the fight of good versus evil in this book.
And the book series was banned because of that.
Like I've said, there is a conservative Christian culture here in the United States.
Some people do not like magic, do not like wizards and witches, and because of that, it was challenged.
I can say personally, I went to a Christian private school, a private Christian school that all the teachers were Christian, all the school was a Christian school that taught about Christianity, and I had a number of teachers lecture me and my classmates about this book series.
So when I was in school, these books were coming out, the movies were coming out, and our teachers told us not to read them, that they were evil.
Reading them would expose us to the devil.
The devil would be invited into our lives and take over our minds and we would, I don't know, I guess turn evil or something?
I'm not really sure.
I don't know, I can say I've seen every single movie.
It was one of my favorite movie series when I was growing up.
So maybe I was a little rebellious.
I didn't really listen to that.
But it was definitely challenged at my school and that's why it is on the list of banned books.
If you're interested in it, of course, like I said, it has that built -in progression, which is so nice.
If you're trying to learn English, they're long books, you have a lot of content, you have audio books that are available, the movies that are available.
So there's just a lot you can use if you are trying to use them to improve your English.
The next book on our list is by George Orwell and it is Animal Farm.
Animal Farm is at a B2 level, so it is upper intermediate, a little bit more challenging than Charlotte's Web or the first Harry Potter book series.
It is about a farm.
So it's a farm that has animals, hence the name Animal Farm.
The farm is run by Mr.
Jones and the animals on his farm end up rebelling against him.
They want to get rid of Mr.
Jones, the farmer, and they want to create a utopia.
A utopia is a society where everything is perfect, where everything is going really well and everyone can live in peace and have all of their rights and their needs met and everything is great.
That's what they want to create.
And this book, like I said, it was written in 1945 when there was a lot of change going on in the world.
It was right after World War II.
There were a lot of things happening politically.
And the book is a political satire.
It's a commentary. It's an analogy of what was going on politically at the time.
The events on the farm and even some of the particular animals on their farm are an analogy for different people who were politicians at the time in the 1940s.
The book talks about political systems, political structures, and political corruption.
What happens when people come into power who maybe shouldn't be in power?
The book was banned again because it has talking animals.
Some conservative Christians really do not like animals talking or having thoughts or ideas.
Another reason why it was banned is because it does have those political contexts to it.
It is a political commentary.
It was considered to be critical of certain governments.
It was banned in different countries.
It also has some violence that occurs between the animals.
And so it was banned for being violent.
Like with other books on our list, it was banned.
But now it is considered to be a classic.
I would say a lot of students here in the United States are assigned to read this book when they're in school.
I read this book when I was in middle school.
So if you're unsure, middle school is around ages maybe 11, 12, around that age.
I think that was 12 when I read this book.
So I read this in my English class.
It is one of those books that is very thought provoking, talks about politics in a way that's simplified.
Like I said, it's only at a B2 level.
So the English is relatively simplified and it's also not very long.
This could be a good book for you to use to help improve your English.
Now we're going to get into our more advanced books.
And our next book on our list is The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower was written in 1999.
So it is more modern than Animal Farm.
And the book here is probably at about a B2 to C1 level.
So we're getting a little bit more advanced.
If you're at a C1 level, this would be manageable.
If you're at B2, this might be a little bit challenging, but it could help you expand your English.
The book is about a character named Charlie.
And he is a high school student.
High school comes after middle school.
It's about ages 13 to 18 here in the United States.
It's a period of four years where students are in school before they go to college or the army or get a job.
The character Charlie is a freshman in the book.
And a freshman is someone who is in their first year of high school.
We call that the freshman year.
So he's a freshman.
He feels a little bit awkward, a little bit out of place, like many people do when they're new to a high school.
And he ends up becoming friends with older students, students who are seniors in their last year of school.
So they take him under their wing.
Under their wing means that they become friends with him and they kind of protect him, give him a place, give him a group of people to hang out with and help him grow.
Now, the book was banned because it is about high school students doing things that maybe teenagers do, but maybe they shouldn't, right?
So it has a little bit of explicit content.
So explicit means adult themes, things that you wouldn't want to have little kids see or read about.
The book has the students partying, drinking, doing drugs.
There's some sexual content in the book.
So because of that, it was banned.
It was thought to have too many adult themes to be a bad influence for students and maybe being a little bit corrupting, right?
You don't want your teenager to do these things.
So you don't want your teenager to read this book.
It was the thinking of why it was banned.
There is a movie version.
So if you are interested in reading the book, of course you can read it.
But if you're not, if you'd rather see the movie version, the movie version is relatively new.
It stars Emma Watson from a few years ago.
So if you're interested, you can watch the movie version.
Some reasons why you should consider reading this book.
It is more modern. Like I said, it's from 1999.
It's a lot newer than Charlotte's Web or Animal Farm.
So you're going to get more modern language.
There's also a lot of colloquialisms.
It's about high school.
Kids talk with slang.
They don't talk in formal language.
So you're going to get a lot of exposure to these colloquial sayings and phrases, a lot of slang in this book.
If you are interested, you can check that out.
The next book on our list is continuing this high school theme.
And it is The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.
This book, again, like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is at a B2 to C1 level, upper intermediate, lower advanced level.
The book is about a student named Holden Caulfield.
In the book, he is a high school student, but he is at a prep school.
So a prep school is an elite school.
It is a school that you have to pay for.
It is not a public school.
So this is a school that rich kids go to.
Holden is a rich kid.
He goes to a prep school and he ends up getting kicked out of his prep school.
When he gets kicked out, he basically just runs away from home.
And he is in New York City.
He goes to New York City.
He wanders around the city by himself.
And he is just thinking about what he's going to do with his life.
The book is considered a classic because it really gets into Holden's thoughts.
It talks about the anxiety he has, the depression, the despair he has for his future.
He doesn't know what he's going to do with his life.
He seems to have some mental issues.
He really has some dark thoughts and it captures everything.
It captures that teenage angst, as we would say, that period of time where you feel anxious and you don't know what you're doing with your life.
And so he's thinking all these thoughts while he's walking around New York City.
He meets some friends.
He meets some strangers.
He meets people who have an impact on his life.
And he really is just trying to figure out who he is and what he's going to do with his life.
There's a lot of different quotes from this book that are famous.
This book, like I said, is considered to be a classic and a lot of people read it.
The reason why it was banned again, Holden does some things that maybe you wouldn't want your teenager to do.
He again gets into some sexual situations.
There's also profanity in this book.
Holden curses, characters curse in this book.
The book has these rebellious themes of him running away from home, getting kicked out of school.
Definitely has some issues of rebellion.
And for all those reasons, it was banned.
The book also has a reputation of being a book that's read by people who commit crimes.
Not that Holden really commits that many crimes in the book.
It's not that he is necessarily a bad person, but this book has this reputation.
So the person who assassinated John Lennon actually was caught with this book in his pocket.
He was a fan of this book.
And there's some other people who were fans of this book who were criminals.
So it got this reputation of being a book that maybe was a bad influence on people.
Now, like I said, a lot of people in the United States read this book.
I have read this book.
My family members have read this book.
We're not criminals.
I don't think I'm a criminal.
So not saying that you're a criminal if you read this book, but it got this bad reputation.
And so that added to it being banned and added to maybe a little bit of the the mythology of this book that bad people read it.
So it is one of those books.
If you are interested in reading it, it has a lot of colloquialisms.
Like I said, there's profanity in this book.
So it does have different grammatical structures and different vocabulary than if you read something that was more formal.
If you're interested in reading it, another great book to check out.
The next book on our list is Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury.
This book is also at the B2 to C1 level, upper and immediate lower advanced.
And the book is about Guy Montag.
Now this is a dystopian novel.
Dystopian means in the future, but a bad future.
You don't want to live in a dystopian future because of the dystopian future.
Everything has gone wrong and society is falling apart.
In this dystopian future, Guy is a fireman.
And what his job is is to collect books and burn them.
So the main part of this story is that books are banned.
And that people are not allowed to read books anymore.
In the story, Guy gets bored and disillusioned with his life.
He ends up collecting the books and reading them.
Of course, by doing that, he's exposed to new ideas, new thoughts.
It expands his world perspective.
And he also meets characters along the way that help him with his critical thinking and his perspective on the world.
It is a little bit ironic, a little bit funny that the book is about a future where books are banned and the book itself was banned because it has this commentary on censorship, on government control, on critical thinking.
It was challenged for being anti -government, for having these themes.
It was banned and it was challenged from being in libraries.
Like I said, the book that is about banned books was a banned book.
It's a little bit funny to think about, but it is one of those classic books.
It is a book that is considered to be well -read, a book that is a strong commentary on censorship and of critical thinking and what can happen when books are banned and when critical thinking is lost.
And we're going to continue on this censorship theme with our last book.
It is again George Orwell.
We talked about him with Animal Farm.
He wrote that, but he also wrote 1984.
1984 is probably at a C1 level.
This is going to be our most challenging book.
If you are going to read one of the books on this list, just know that.
It is probably George Orwell's most famous book and it is continuing on with that theme of censorship.
So this is another dystopian novel.
It was written in 1949.
So at the time when it was written, 1984 was in the future.
Of course, nowadays, 1984 is in the past and maybe the distant past.
But it at the time was about the future and a dystopian future.
The character here, Winston Smith, works for the government.
There is one government party that is led by Big Brother.
The government watches everything people do.
They control what people think.
They control the information that people see.
And Winston is part of that.
So he is part of forming this history that the government wants.
Anything that does not align with what the government is teaching people has to get destroyed and that is his job.
Of course, just like with our other previous book, Fahrenheit 451, he becomes disillusioned.
He meets people along the way who help him change his perspective and he tries to become part of the rebellion against the government.
The book is very popular.
A lot of people have read it.
And again, it was banned because it was considered to be a political satire.
It was banned because it was thought to be anti -government, anti -conformity, too much about free speech.
So it does have that history of being banned.
If you are interested in reading it, there's a lot of terms from this book that have become mainstream, that have become part of the vocabulary here in the United States and the English -speaking world in general.
So you will have a lot of cultural influence from this book.
There's also a movie version, so if you're not interested in reading the book, you can, of course, check out the movie as well.
I hope you found this list interesting.
I hope there was a book, or at least more than one book, that gets your interest that you want to read and use to help improve your English abilities.
A reminder that I try to encourage people to get as much input as possible.
Reading will help your English level.
So hopefully you found a book on this list that you can use to read and get that input.
Even if you're not interested in reading, even if you don't want to read a book on this list, hopefully you learned some new vocabulary, some new phrases.
I know we've talked about a lot.
And just a reminder to check out the vocabulary list that's in the description of this podcast episode for those words and phrases.
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Tell me if you're interested in any of these books, if you're reading any of these books, or if you want more episodes like this.
There's a lot of books we can talk about, so just let me know.
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Until then, keep learning English!
