Celebrating Banned Books Week seems like it should be an oxymoron. Why would I want to celebrate something that opposes what I value—books? Of course it’s not and it doesn’t. Rather, Banned Books Week is meant to be a reminder to all of us that censorship attempts to define and limit the material we read are, even in the 21st century, abnormally healthy. And it’s not just certain groups or individuals any more. The government is quietly squishing our constitutionally-endowed rights to make our own choices through the so-called Patriot Act and the ominously named Homeland Security, which strike me as being more than shades of 1984.

Granted, most of us have some books we’d like to see gone or at least unavailable. But we are smart enough to know that banning one means opening the door to banning all. A free society must have its comfort level stretched, challenged and even occasionally knocked down in order to stay free. To take one simple example, how would the banning of the book, The Grapes of Wrath, which has suffered numerous attempts from the day of its publication up to and including today, have affected all of us who have read it? I remember shortly after my first reading coming across the report on the Oklahoma congressman who called the book “obscene,” and denounced it as “a lie, a black, infernal creation of a twisted, distorted mind.” Even better, the Oklahoma City Times opined that the book had “Tobacco Road looking as pure as Charlotte Bronte, when it comes to obscene, vulgar, lewd, stable language.”

“Geez,” I said to a friend after I read that, “I must have missed something. I’m going to have to go back and reread it.” (This was undoubtedly not the reaction those would censor and ban it had hoped to elicit, but the memory makes me laugh whenever I pick the book up.)

Not surprisingly, several of BiblioBuffet’s columnists have tackled the subject. One of those is Anne Michael in Seasoned Lightly who compares the arrival of autumn with its announcement of seasonal change to Banned Books Week in a stunning new essay. 

In Readings, Henry Carrigan takes on Banned Books Week by listing those books that he feels have altered the world. Many are not read today outside of college classrooms, literary circles or specialized fields, but all of them have had an enormous impact on every person through the influence they exerted in helping to create our world as it is today.

Kat Warren offers yet more on Banned Books Week as she returns to Bibliopinions with a succinct essay. As a librarian and fanatical reader, she has strong feelings on the subject of books and reading, and on those who would make your decisions about reading them for you. 

BiblioBuffet’s interview specialist, Daniel M. Jaffe, meets up with David Borofka, a short story writer and novelist. Borofka’s keen insights—“what the writer of fiction absolutely needs is the willingness to dream, to trust the truthfulness of his or her intuition, and the ability to translate those dreams“—are no less true for life than for writing. See what else he thinks and how he translates those thoughts into his writing in Talking Across the Table. 

The television series based on the Dexter books returned this week, and Nicki Leone, who is in Atlanta this week attending and managing a bookseller’s conference, talks about her affection for this offbeat character (a serial killer who targets only serial killers) in A Reading Life.

Bubble gum. Do you chew it? (I don’t.) Do you like it? (I don’t.) But that didn’t stop me from looking into the evolution of this childhood treat, and what I found was fascinating. In On Marking Books, I explore a history that runs from ancient Greece to today’s San Luis Obispo and encompasses an unusual friendship and an accidental discovery. 

While you’re here, I encourage you to check out our Literary Amusements page where each day brings a new literary factoid as well as a new reading quote. It’s a quick way to intrigue your brain on a daily basis.

Finally, here is a site that intrigues me as I think it will you. The International Society of Altered Book Artists is a non-profit organization “dedicated to promoting altered books as an art form.” What does this mean? It means these artists take a book and “recycle it by creative means into a work of art” The idea of doing what they do—rebinding, painting, cutting, burning, folding, adding to it, collaging it, using gold leaf, rubber stamps, drilling it or otherwise adorning it” makes me wince a bit, but only until I see their work. Check out their gallery for the fabulous results.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren