You know I can’t let this pass without comment.
The last week of September is when wise people remind us that the freedom to read, the freedom of access to information, the freedom to choose for ourselves is always in peril. This year Banned Books Week is September 26 through October 3, although I strongly suggest that you read banned books every chance you get throughout the year.
Authors who wish to increase sales of their books should try to have them banned. It garners great publicity for the title, generating larger sales and public attention. Several years ago when a school in Kentucky banned one of Kurt Vonnegut’s books, Mr. Vonnegut was smart enough to write a letter to the editor of that small town’s newspaper, thanking the school for contributing to an increase in awareness of his work as well as his royalties.
Despite the fact that Americans pride ourselves on our freedoms, we manage to censor (or make the attempt) a surprisingly large number of books for the most bizarre reasons.Here are a few of the books that have been banned in one place or another over the years:
- Farenheit 451 (a book about banning books)
- The Book Your Church Doesn’t Want You To Read
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (banned as recently as 2007, in Manchester, CT)
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Civil Disobedience
- The American Heritage Dictionary
- Literature in Society
- And Tango Makes Three (banned in 2008, Loudon County, VA and Ankeny, IA)
- Beloved (banned in 2007 in Louisville, KY)
- The Freedom Writers Diary (banned in 2008 in Indianapolis, IN)
- Grendel (banned in 2008 in Sherwood, OR)
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (banned in 2009 in Beulah, ND)
- Song of Solomon (banned in 2009 in Shelby, MI)
This list barely scratches the surface. Thankfully the internet is not yet banned — well, in fact, it is in many places. But most of you will be able to access sites about banned books and actions you can take to stop the madness. You may want to start with these:
Banned Books Week : What You Can Do
My own choice for Banned Books Week is that anarchistic classic Christine by Stephen King.
Posted by infloox on October 6, 2009 at 2:40 am
I too am surprised at the sheer number of books that are officially banned, especially since so many of them are literary classics! I’ve posted a shortlist of the ALA’s recently published list on my blog (http://infloox.wordpress.com/ ) and I was really surprised that Khaled Hosseini made it on there too. He’s basically become the face of international modern literature and they’re banning him! Although, I can sort of understand why they’d be against Philip Pullman, even though I love his books…