Thursday, October 02, 2008

Banned book week 2008

This is an American event, but as you might have noticed, we don't exactly shy away from discussing American things in these parts. Plus, even though this isn't as big a problem in Canada, it's still worth mentioning.

This is National Banned Books Week in the United States. The American Library Association has a bunch of events to mark the event and to remind people that you do have to fight for certain freedoms, even for things like making sure certain groups don't pull books they don't like out of libraries.

And as this list shows, people really never do give up.

Fortunately I don't think the local library goes through any of this kind of trouble. Most Canadian libraries don't go through this kind of trouble. But as I said, it never hurts to remember that you have to fight for certain things. And freedom to read is something I consider to be well worth fighting for.

Besides, what narrow-mind asshole wants to ban Huckleberry Finn? And hey, I understand why the Golden Compass trilogy pisses off some religious people, but it's a fantastic trilogy. It should be mandatory reading in schools, not on a blacklist.

Last Five
1. Aveda - Hot Hot Heat
2. Back where you belong - 38 Special
3. Homelands - Spirit of the West
4. Like a star - Corinne Bailey Rae
5. True love will find you in the end - Matthew Good*

1 comment:

Ron said...

In Canada alot of the same issues are covered by "Freedom to Read Week" in late Feb. The ALA is an incredible organization tho - the amount of useful library information they produce is amazing.

I went to one of their conferences about a decade ago in San Francisco. The sheer magnitude of the exbition area was staggering. Imagine four hockey arenas filled with people trying to sell you books, computers, books, magazines, library funiture, catalogs, books and books. All of that but no where to sit down - after three days it was like a kind of special hell.