The 10 Most Challenged Books of 2013

Happy reading, kiddos!

10 Modern Day Book Burnings

Happy burning! (or not)

11 Books That Are Still Banned Today

The list, care of Airship Daily.

Think You Know Banned Books?

Take the quiz and find out.

Censored and Banned Books

10 Most Challenged Books in 2012

The list, including Captain Underpants and Fifty Shades of Grey, care of the Christian Science Monitor.

11 Book Burnings in History

The list, care of Mental Floss.

From said list...

6. The Library of Congress

In 1800, President Adams decided that the new government needed a place to hold "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress." Thus the Library of Congress was born. Only 14 years later though, the Library, along with the White House and much of Washington, D.C., was burned to the ground by the invading British. Considering there were only 3000 books in the library at the time, this burning wasn’t the most terrible loss, but it led directly to a much worse one. Famously, Thomas Jefferson, who had the largest private library in America at the time at around 6500 volumes, offered to sell his collection to the government to replace what had been lost. The books were happily accepted and everything was great until 1851 when an accidental fire destroyed more than two-thirds of Jefferson’s collection and two-thirds of the Library’s total collection. So if the British had not burned down the Library in the first place, we might have far more of the president’s personal books still today.

7. Chinese Libraries

During World War II, it was policy for the Japanese military to destroy libraries. In fact, there are few wars in which you won’t find a major library destroyed; before the internet they were some of the only places to find written examples of a city or country’s culture and heritage, and therefore made very symbolic targets. But few armies destroyed as many libraries, or as many books, as the Japanese in China. They burned eight major libraries and their collections to the ground, resulting in the loss of millions of books.

Top 20 Books They Tried to Ban

The list, care of the Telegraph.

Should Some Books Be Banned?

That's the question recently asked by Lit Reactor.

From the post...

That’s the problem facing the Indian government. Criticism, however mild, of any group – religious, tribal, regional, political – is liable to set off major upheaval. The same is true in Pakistan, which also labours under the burden of a border almost guaranteed to cause trouble, because of how it divides tribal regions. 

Look at it this way and book banning becomes a lesser of two evils, a way of keeping the lid on a situation which might spiral into bloodshed. And in practice, the Indian government polices its bans lightly. The point appears to be to reassure touchy factions that their concerns are being taken seriously, and so far, this is a policy which has worked. You might say that in other, more peaceful countries, banning books which incite hatred – racial, gender-based or religious – can be justified on the same grounds. 

Consider another issue with regard to political dissent. Books can seek to obscure as well as enlighten. Is it acceptable to allow revisionists to publish their arguments? To deny the Holocaust happened; to downplay the massacres in Bosnia? 

It's one rule for all. If we want the authors we approve of to have freedom of speech, that same freedom has to apply to those we don't approve off as well.

John Waters Reads Lady Chatterley's Lover

Famous Authors’ Funniest Responses to Their Books Being Banned

The list, care of Flavorwire.

From said list...

Maurice Sendak to Stephen Colbert on the frequent banning of In The Night Kitchen:
Stephen Colbert: “This one gets banned all over the place. And you know why.”
Maurice Sendak: “He’s got a dick.”
…
SC: “Why are you printing a smutty book?”
MS: “Because he’s a boy.”
SC: “Yeah, yeah, but you don’t have to rub it in our face. Boys wear pants.”
MS: “Not when they’re dreaming. Have you never had a dream yourself where you were totally naked?”
SC: “No.”
MS: “Well I think you’re a man of little imagination.”

Banned Books Week Flash Mob

Banned Books Week is Coming

And in Today's Book Burning News

Let's all torch 50 Shades of Gray, yes? It's vile.

From a piece in the New York Daily News...


A British charity is proposing a mass burning of copies of E.L. James' "50 Shades of Grey," the sexy trilogy that is easily the most popular book of the season, charges that it is pure trash aside.

The burning is being organized by Clare Phillipson, who heads Wearside Women in Need, an organization that battles domestic abuse. It is based in Washington, England. The bonfire is scheduled for Nov. 5, and Phillipson appears to be collecting volumes for the occasion. However, it is unclear if she needs a permit from municipal authorities to hold the burning.

Her main objection appears to be that the power dynamic between Ana Steele and Christian Grey borders on the abusive. One imagines the books' delving into BDSM does not thrill her, either.

Where Do Chinese People Buy Books Forbidden by China?

Hong Kong.

From a piece on CNN...

When a mainland Chinese tourist heard about a bookstore in Hong Kong that sold books banned by Beijing, he knew he had to check it out.

The Beijing native traveled to Hong Kong for a weekend in July and stopped by People's Commune in Causeway Bay to see if the rumors were true. "I want to know the inside stories of the party," said the man, who did not want to be identified because it was illegal to bring the books back home. "It has nothing to do with me personally but there is no way you can get those inside China."

In mainland China the government places strict controls on mass media, which often means that political analysis and controversial accounts of Chinese history are impossible to find within the country's borders.

However, entrepreneurs in Hong Kong -- a special administrative region of China that has freedom of press -- are cashing in on the ban to cater to the millions of mainland Chinese who travel to Hong Kong to shop.

School Bans "Bastard Out of Carolina"

BOO!

From a piece in the San Jose Daily News...


In what's becoming an annual showdown that's uncommon in the liberal Bay Area, the Fremont Unified School District board overruled Hu and rejected novelist Dorothy Allison's "Bastard Out of Carolina" for the AP English supplemental reading list. While the book detailing horrific childhood abuse will remain in school libraries, it can't be taught in class.

That has Hu and others bringing up charges of censorship by the three-member board majority. 

"I'm challenging them on their biases," said Hu, who twice before submitted Allison's semiautobiographical novel and National Book Award nominee for district approval. Even with the endorsement of a district textbook committee, the board voted it down, as it did in 2009 and 2010.
Last year, the board rejected her nomination of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about AIDS in the 1980s. 

Board members deny that their decisions are politically motivated. Instead, they say the books are too violent, shocking or disparaging of certain groups. 

Ack! A Book about Happy Lesbians?! Ban it!

That's just what a school in Utah did.

From a piece in the Los Angeles Times...

A picture book aimed at pre-reading children has raised the ire of two dozen parents of students at a Utah elementary school who say that its subject matter is decidely adult: the story of a lesbian couple raising children.

The book, “In Our Mother’s House” by Patricia Polacco, was removed from the library shelves at Windridge Elementary School near Salt Lake City after parents raised objections about the suitability of the book’s social message.

The Poop on Poop Books

Should scatological children's books be censored?

From a piece in the National Post...


All of the librarians “strongly defended” the place of scatologically themed books in the public library system (hey, even Beowulf and Shakespeare included references to feces). More than half said the “intellectual freedom rights” of children to have access to books they enjoy was important. Many said they used such books as Walter the Farting Dog to encourage boys to read, in light of troubling literacy data that shows boys don’t enjoy tucking into a book like girls do.

“One of the main reasons librarians defended these books was they felt children [when they start to understand stories] have just gone through a very difficult stage right after potty training — it’s been the entire focus of the child’s life and focus of much of the interaction between parent and child,” Ms. Curry said.

“But as soon as the child is potty trained, then all of a sudden you’re not supposed to talk about it. A child yelling in the library, ‘Mommy, mom I need to poo poo’ is met with a shhhh…. That’s why kids are enjoying this. They’re trying to figure out what is taboo and what isn’t.”

Having a book in the library that celebrates this taboo is “something they find really funny” because they know they’re not supposed to exclaim the words out loud, Ms. Curry said. It also helps make children more aware of their bodies, able to identify their various parts and not be ashamed, she added.

10 Most Frequently Challenged Library Books in 2011

The list, care of Media Bistro.

Australia's Hidden Stash of Censored Books

In 2005, Australian literary historian Nicole Moore discovered a nearly-forgotten archive of her country's banned books packed in nearly 800 boxes stored seven stories underground in a government repository.

From a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald...

Intrigued by rumours of a censor's library, literary historian Nicole Moore went searching for the old customs archive of banned books. In 2005, she tracked down the collection seven storeys underground in a huge repository in western Sydney. Thousands of banned books, all neatly covered and catalogued, filled 793 boxes. As Moore shows, such secret collections have accumulated in many parts of the world, often carefully tended by censor-librarians. Private Case, Public Scandal, the book that revealed the contents of the British Library's secret collection, was itself banned in Australia in 1966. Not surprisingly, the 20th century's largest and most notorious repository of forbidden literature was in the Soviet Union, with more than 1 million items.

Having uncovered this long-buried Australian archive, Moore set about the daunting task of charting its history. She was aided by Peter Coleman's pioneering work, Obscenity, Blasphemy and Sedition, first published 50 years ago. The Censor's Library is a much more substantial work, analysing in forensic detail the major controversies and teasing out the narrative of how such restrictions, and the ensuing protests, shaped Australia's cultural, intellectual and literary landscape.