2016 Reading Challenge #2

This year, I'm taking part in the 2016 Reading Challenge to try and motivate myself to read more! I love reading but unfortunately my depression has been making it difficult for me to do some of the things I once loved to do, and so it was my aim to find a challenge that I could keep up with throughout the year and hopefully get back my passion for reading! The last couple of months have been quite hard for me and as a consequence, a lot of things haven't got done including this reading challenge! It's a new month, a fresh start and it's time for me to pick up another book and get lost in it's pages. The next category I'm going to cross off on the reading challenge list is 'a book that was banned at some point'. 

The book I'm going to be reading for this category is The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. I've been searching all over my house for months looking for this book. I bought it after I spotted it on a recommended reading list for my degree, and like with a lot of those recommended books it was never actually read! Since coming home from uni, various boxes of my things have been stored in different areas around my house so finding this book was a challenge! Now that it's been found, it's about time I read it since Charles Darwin was such an influential scientist for the field of zoology, most famous for his theory of evolution work. 

This book was originally published in 1859, a time when many countries were dominated by religious ruling. This book challenged the beliefs and teachings of Christianity, as it discussed the theory of evolution by natural selection. This theory introduced the idea that all animals on earth had evolved over generations from their ancestors and their species had survived due to specific traits which made them more suited to their environment. This argued Christian beliefs of how the world was created, and was considered blasphemy. The content of this book caused a lot of controversy, it got people talking and questioning the religious teachings they'd always believed to be true, and therefore many countries decided to ban the book.

Although I'm already pretty knowledge about the history of the evolutionary theory just from some of the lectures I had at both college and university, I'm still looking forward to reading this book and picturing how the content would have been pioneering at the time it was published. I'm also interested to learn about the evolutionary theory from Charles Darwin's point of view and through his own words. Have you ever read this book? What was your opinion? Let me know in the comments :) 

Thankyou for reading!

♥

Have you ever read any books that were once banned? Which books? 

I'd love some recommendations. 

Enjoyed this post? Check out my first 2016 Reading Challenge post here