Banned Book Week

I just found out today that this is Banned Book Week. I just couldn’t resist the temptation to record a few thoughts.

50 Banned Books

I like this list of banned books. I also find it immensely funny. I can understand why some of them get banned, not that I agree but I do understand.

1984 can be disturbing, not just in the ideas it brings up, but because of the future it presents. In many ways, 1984 is a bleak and depressing novel. Of course, that is also part of its power. Brave New World is another novel that falls into that category.

Others on this list just make me laugh.

Contemplate the irony of banning a book that attempts to show us a possible future where those who ban books…well, really those who burn them...have come into power, Fahrenheit 451.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
The Grapes of Wrath?
The Scarlet Letter?
Jaws?

I cannot really bring myself to comment on those.

Many of the books on this list are on standard High School reading lists.

Have you considered that those books are on reading lists for the very same reasons that they are banned? These books make you think. They make you question things. Some of them bring you to a greater understanding of mankind, and, some of them will confuse the hell out of you. Well, I know that Slaughterhouse-Five confused the hell out of me.

Have you also considered that some of these books are on reading lists because they were banned? We can learn a great deal about human beings simply by reading what some people find offensive. Of course, most of these books weren’t banned because they were offensive, though certainly someone was offended.

Most of them were banned because someone was afraid of them.

Fear, not a displaced sense of moral outrage, is the cause of book banning. They may wrap themselves in moral outrage, or political correctness, or even patriotism, but that is just the cloak. What lies beneath is fear.

Now, it may be a bit late to let you know that I am only providing commentary on books that I have actually read, and I have only read 14 of them.

So, when I saw this list, my thought was…oooo…new reading list.