Celebrate the Right to Read: Banned Books Week September 25 to October 1, 2016

Welcome to Banned Books Week 2016. What?  People are still banning books? Yes, they are.

All the books on our display have been challenged within the past year or previous years. And we have a whole book  (Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read by Robert P. Doyle) that just talks about the hundreds of other titles that we cannot fit on our small display. New books to the banned list this year are the title  The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and the children's book The Librarian of Basra: A True Story of Iraq by Jeanette Winter.


Why are people banning books? There can be various reasons that titles are challenged in schools and libraries (and sometimes bookstores) and they can change as society changes.  TIME magazine has a great article entitled What the List of Most Banned Books Says About Our Society’s Fears,  that talks about this topic. What we think is shocking now - may not be so shocking in later years.

But eliminating ones' access to materials and information is what banning is all about - taking one person's opinion and enforcing it on others' choices. It may have worked for awhile in the past - but with today's technology and media - it is hard to keep anything undercover. (And it raises sales on the banned author's titles!)

Everyone is different. What one reader enjoys, the other reader may not. The right book, with the right reader, for the right time is what librarians like to say.

So stand up for your right to read and read the banned book of your choice. I'm going to take The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks of off my TBR shelf and start it this week.

What about you?