Go On...I Dare You...Read These Books

Chew On This Awhile!

Yes, it's that time of year again when I climb atop the high horse that sits idly by in my garage most of the time. I pontificate with real passion one time a year, and this is (lucky you) it. It is, after all, Banned Books Week: a time to reflect on the idiocy of people who claim they know what's best for every single one of us, and who couch all of their venom in phrases like, :this is for the children," or "this smut is anti-family." To quote Eric Cartman, "I hate you guys so very much."
Authors have long since hopped aboard the bandwagon to castigate those who would provide the moral compass for us all. Mark Twain noted that "Censorship is like telling a man he can't have a steak because a baby can't chew it." Heinrich Heine, a German author from the 1800s of whom I had never heard before tonight, said this: "Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people." He proved Nostradamus-like 112 years later when the Nazis publicly burned books, including some of Heine's.
The American Library Association notes that more than 460 challenges were issued to specific books over the last year. Obviously, I won't list them all, but I will list the top ten banned books (some of them part of a series) from this decade.
1. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
2. Alice (a series, too, I think) by Phyllis Reynolds Nayler
*3. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
4. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.
*5. Of Mice and Men by JOhn Steinbeck
*6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
*7. Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz
8. His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman
9. ttyl series by Lauren Myracle
10. The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Steven Chbosky

Those marked with an asterisk were also challenged during the PREVIOUS decade as well!!

I have not read most of them so I suspect they are current tomes in school libraries, challenged by helicopter parents who demand Puritan-like atmosphere for their children but who don't realize that their children are already looking at porn on the home computer. (not like when I was a kid...it was National Geographic)

While I have no immediate plans to read one of these on the list that has thus far escaped my attention, I probably WILL ACTIVELY AVOID reading Arguing with Idiots and Pitchforks and Torches.
I'm just not "down" with writers who seek to divide us or who seek to set my moral compass.
Go read something other than this diatribe!