"banned books"

1953 · Ray Bradbury · 249 pages · Science Fiction

Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel about a society that burns books remains one of the most recognized titles in science fiction, and its core warning about intellectual complacency hits harder in the age of infinite scrolling than it did when television was the villain. It's more of a passionate argument than a fully realized novel, and readers who want deep characters or careful world-building will find it thin. But Bradbury wasn't trying to build a complete world. He was trying to scare people into reading, and seventy years later, the fear still lands. It's a short, fierce, imperfect book that earns its place on the shelf through sheer conviction.

1951 · J.D. Salinger · 214 pages · Literary Fiction

J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel remains one of the most argued-about books in American literature, and the argument itself is the point. Holden Caulfield either speaks to something real inside you or he doesn't, and that reaction says as much about the reader as it does about the book. It's short, it's polarizing, and it refuses to leave the conversation no matter how many people wish it would. For a novel about a teenager wandering around New York for three days, it has generated an almost absurd amount of cultural weight. Love it or roll your eyes at it, it earned its place.