Celebrating a Thing That Shouldn’t Exist!

I’m so sorry, my dear readers, for not gracing these pages with a post last week. The weekend ended up being busier than I anticipated, and I sat down to write some ruminations on the nature of friendship I’d been having, but that post quickly got too personal and emotional, so I just stopped. You may still get to see that post some day soon, when I’ve had some time and distance to think about it.

Instead, today I’m here to write about a thing that shouldn’t exist at all: it’s Banned Books Week!

Certainly you’re familiar with the idea of a banned or challenged book. It’s when a well-meaning (read: busybody) parent reads a book–or doesn’t read it at all–and decides the content is so objectionable that, not only are they going to keep their child from reading it, but that NO CHILD SHOULD READ IT EVER. You know, garden-variety censorship.

On principle, I accept that any parent is free to keep content from their children. Totally get that. What I find ludicrous is any attempt to make that decision for me–or any other parent–too.

As a parent, no book has ever been forbidden from my kids. This was the same for me as I was growing up; I had free rein at our public library, our local bookstore, and the Scholastic Book Fair. I distinctly remember being the only sixth-grader at my school in possession of a copy of Judy Blume’s Forever (fellow Gen-Xers will know exactly the book I’m talking about), a book I had read to tatters by my freshman year of high school. The same book I loaned to my mom, who read it in an afternoon and proclaimed it “dumb” when she returned it to me. The same book I read again a few years ago, wondering if adult me would also find it “dumb.” I didn’t think it was dumb, but I read all 200-plus pages with a great deal of nostalgia, and I did find the characters naïve. But of course they are! They’re seventeen.

I remembered all of this when my own sixth-grade son asked if he could read Fifty Shades of Grey. I shrugged and told him I didn’t care, but that I heard it was pretty awful. I still have never read that book and have no plans to. In preparation for writing this post, I asked if he ever actually read that book. My reluctant-reader son said, “No, but I saw the movie. It was…not good.”

Of course it’s asinine to have a week to celebrate a thing that shouldn’t exist, because books should not be banned in the first place, but like many other things in the time we live in, here we are.

The ALA also published this infographic of the reasons most books are challenged:

Artwork courtesy of the American Library Association, www.ala.org.

Now, you might notice, as I did, that this collage is simply a list of things that make people human and interesting. So of course we don’t want children to know about them. The one I find most humorous is that one at the top that says: BRAINWASH CHILDREN; as if brainwashing a child was the easiest thing to do. If that were the case, I would have brainwashed mine to pick up after themselves YEARS ago.

I thought about posting a list (you know I love ’em) of recent banned or challenged books, a few of which I have read and one of which–Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men–is one of my favorites, but I decided not to. If you are the least bit curious, you can read about banned and challenged books here. The books I haven’t read on that list were quickly added to the list of books I must read.

Anyway, join me this week in celebrating banned books by reading one (or more. I don’t know how fast you read), and in being a vocal critic of censorship in any form. That will make us all happy.

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A quick shout-out to the people who told me personally how touched they were by my September 11 memorial post (read it here). As a writer, it’s always wonderful to know that my words have touched a reader in good ways (and–though I hate to admit it–bad ways, too). When that happens, if you could do me a favor and drop a comment, I’d appreciate it. You could also say something on Facebook if we’re friends there, or on Instagram if that’s more your thing. At this time, I only add people on Facebook I actually know in person, but anyone can follow me on Instagram.

A quick NaNoWriMo update: Pulling the rest of my life together started this week, when I began assembling a mountain of freezer-to-crockpot meals for us to eat in November. Since I’m not a food and recipe blogger, I’m not going to share that whole process (complete with photos!). If you’re interested–there are a fuck-ton of aforementioned food bloggers who have done just that. I found most of mine on Pinterest (search “freezer to crockpot”), but I bet a similar search could be performed on your browser of choice and reveal more results than you thought were possible.