For those who do not know, this week is Banned Book Week. Here’s the ALA’s explanation of why they do this:

Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

This year Google got in on the act, you can use a special page of Google Book Search to check out some of the best (and banned-est) books of the 20th century. Don Wood offers some good ways to celebrate this week. I suggest finding a nice book that’s been banned or challenged (there’s a difference) and flaunt it! I suggest Catcher In The Rye, or Of Mice And Men, for starters. Other good ones are The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Heather Has Two Mommies, and if you’ve got the upper body strength, any of the Harry Potter books (seriously, the last two books are quite the workout!) All of the above books have been banned or challenged. I have read all of them, and frankly I think I’m a better human being for having read them (yes even Harry Potter).

I read a LOT. I chew through books like nobody’s business, and I’ll read damned near anything. I like reading and I like to go to that place where only books can take me. Even if it was a book I hated reading I have absolutely no right to tell someone else they are not allowed to read it-not that they shouldn’t, which I have told people many times-but that they have no choice in the matter, that book is not available to them.

I have a pretty strong stance on this, I wrote a lot of papers about censorship and banned books and other such matters through all of high school and college, and I’ve done a lot of research on the subject, it’s near and dear to me. So go get that book and read it. And if you don’t read it but support the right of others to do so, just carry it around with you instead. A book is always a great accessory.

Read the list of the top 10 banned books (of 2005) after the jump…

They are:

* “It’s Perfectly Normal” for homosexuality, nudity, sex education, religious viewpoint, abortion and being unsuited to age group;
* “Forever” by Judy Blume for sexual content and offensive language;
* “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger for sexual content, offensive language and being unsuited to age group;
* “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content and offensive language;
* “Whale Talk” by Chris Crutcher for racism and offensive language;
* “Detour for Emmy” by Marilyn Reynolds for sexual content;
* “” by Sonya Sones for sexual content and being unsuited to age group;
* Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey for anti-family content, being unsuited to age group and violence;
* “Crazy Lady!” by Jane Leslie Conly for offensive language; and
* “It’s So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families” by Robie H. Harris for sex education and sexual content.

Off the list this year, but on for several years past, are the Alice series of books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain.

Related posts:

1. I didn’t do it. But if I did, here’s how it would have happened….
2. A Curious and Peculiar People
3. Frustrated with a local company
4. The Books in your Living Room
5. Graphic Novel Reading Club - Tonight