Banned Books Week starts today and goes on until October 1, 2011.
I decided I should honor it by reading one. There are probably some in my TBR list anyway and I won’t have to break my rule of no more books until the TBR list is in single digits.
I started by looking up lists of banned books and discovered the American Library Association (ALA) has some excellent lists. They keep track of this stuff.
For 2010 the top banned/challenged books are:
- And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language, racism, sex education, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence - Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, and sexually explicit - Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
Reasons: drugs, offensive language, and sexually explicit - The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and violence - Lush, by Natasha Friend
Reasons: drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group - What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: sexism, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group - Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Reasons: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, and religious viewpoint - Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie
Reasons: homosexuality and sexually explicit - Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: religious viewpoint and violence
I’ve not read Revolutionary Voices or And Tango Makes Three, but they were banned/challenged because of homosexuality. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. I mean, there was a recent furor over agents rejecting books because of gay characters. In this day and age, when people are still trying ban/challenge books because of homosexuality, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs.
I’ve only read three of these books: Brave New World, The Hunger Games and Twilight.
I can kind of understand of Brave New World and The Hunger Games. I don’t agree with it, but I can kind of understand it. A little. Brave New World’s use of science is pretty scary, not that it’s cited as a reason, but I imagine that’s why someone would ban/challenge it. The Hunger Games are pretty violent, but it fits the book and I am not sure I agree it’s “unsuited to age group”.
But Twilight? Seriously? What’s there to object to in Twilight? I don’t like Twilight, mind, but what about the religious viewpoint and violence? It’s not even that violent. And the religious viewpoint thing is pretty out there. I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. Maybe someone can explain it to me?
Also, for this past decade, from 2000-2009, the top banned/challenged book is the Harry Potter series. I look at that and laugh. It makes less sense than objecting to Twilight (which at least has vampires. Even if they are sparkly.) Harry Potter has the classic fantasy quest thing going on, some of the best world building around, great characters. How can anyone object to it?
Related articles
- Banned Books Week, September 24th – October 1st (alleganylibrarycollections.wordpress.com)
- Event: Banned Books Week (bookchelle.com)
- Banned Books Week – Celebrating the Freedom to Read (dublinlibrary.wordpress.com)
- Banned Books Week , September 24 -October 01 2011 (poethead.wordpress.com)
- ALA | Frequently challenged books of the 21st century (taholtorf.wordpress.com)
- Mark Twain story formally ‘unbanned’ in US (guardian.co.uk)
- Banned Books Week: Just a Lot of Propaganda Says Jonah Goldberg (jonathanturley.org)
- Free your Mind (stulibrary.wordpress.com)
- In defense of literature: Banned Books Week (jillianreadsbooks2.wordpress.com)
Story Treasury 
I can remember as a voracious reader in childhood, I read everything I could get my hands on. Years later I found a list of “banned” books – which I thought would be full of racy, taboo titles. Turned out, I’d read most of them already – and hadn’t noticed that they were different from any other “acceptable” book I read. Lesson Learned: never let others’ opinions dictate how you think (or what you read).
And now I think that many banned lists offer the most mind-stretching material out there (except for Twilight – I would’ve banned it for sheer bad writing, but then I’m not into teenage angst and soap operas).
LOL That’s funny. On the ALA website, there’s a chart that says sexual content in number 1 reason why books are banned/challenged, but of the banned/challenged books I’ve read, most of them aren’t actually all that sexually explicit.
^ The only thing worth banning in Twilight is the bad writing. There’s some not-so-great ideas that Meyer seems to preach in her books, but nothing worth banning.
Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Apparently some people think otherwise.
I still can’t believe Sherman Alexie’s book was banned. I guess it makes sense, though — I think he’s one of the most profound writers of our time, and it’s the most popular ones who are so quick to get singled out!
The popular and the threatening! Popular works that threaten probably scary people.