This week is Banned Books Week. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you know I bring this up each year. And I’m going to keep bringing it up until I don’t have to. Banned Books Week is a good time to renew a commitment to making sure that no-one is prevented from choosing and reading any book. Banning books doesn’t stop people thinking, but it does have all sorts of dangerous implications. I invite you to support the reading of all books (even ones you might not like). Try a new author, read a banned book, support your library and its efforts to keep books available.
I’m with the banned – are you?
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down.
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 
It’s always quite surprising to see some of the books that have been banned over the years. And in the time of cancel culture, there is always someone calling for the banning of something! It’s like when they used to ban pop records from the radio though – it was a sure fire way to make the record Top of the Pops! 😉
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Haha! That’s true, FictionFan! The quickest way to get young people to listen to a song or read a book is to tell them they can’t! It is interesting, too, how many people say this or that book should be banned. In their minds, ‘inappropriate’ means ‘I don’t agree with it.’ Even worse (to me, anyway), are those who yell for banning books they’ve never even read or seen.
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This is a great topic, Margot, and one I totally agree with. And I like the choice of the song too.
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Thanks, Tracy. To me, it’s vitally important. And I think the song’s great – I thought it fit here…
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Thanks for your annual reminder Margot. Banning books will never end as zealots will exist forever from left to right determined to ban books that they think, often rightly, challenge their orthodoxy. My modest contribution to the fight against the zealots is, as a member of the public library board, to continue to value books even when I disagree with their contents.
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As a member of your library board, Bill, you’ve got such an important role to play when it comes to fighting against book banning. Your efforts are much appreciated. As you say, there are people from different political persuasions who believe that books that challenge their orthodoxy should be banned. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen.
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Me too Margot – banning books is the thin end of the wedge and I’m totally with you.
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Thanks, KBR. And you put that very well. The minute you ban a book, you open a door to very dangerous things. And it is a very, very slippery slope, as I see it.
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Yes, let’s boost those banned books. There’s a bunch of great ones, including classics, in there. 🙂
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Yes, indeed, Diane!! You’re absolutely right! 🙂
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I’m late to this, but I’m totally with the banned. It’s strange, because the American right makes a big deal about free speech and then Republican states like Florida ban books left, right and centre. And then there’s the radical left cancelling everything that doesn’t fit their ideology. The world’s a weird place now.
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It is, indeed, a weird place, OP. Extremists on all sides of the political spectrum tend to want to ban any thinking that deviates from their thinking. And there’s nothing like a book to get a person thinking. So in that sense, it’s logical that extremists want books banned. It’s a scary thought, in my opinion.
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