Banned Books Week - A Little Late

I decided to post about this last Monday, but, as with most things lately, I forgot. It's still Banned Books Week (ends tomorrow), so late is better than never. For those of you who aren't familiar with this particular week, it's not about going out and choosing which books to burn. No, instead, it's all about raising awareness that some people actually do go out and challenge, ban, or even burn certain books that they don't agree with in some way.

I'm all about our First Amendment rights, so obviously this bothers me. I recall reading several books growing up that I've recently discovered ended up on the Banned Books List. While I have no problem with people disagreeing with book content, I do find it irritating that those same people want to take away my choice to read or not read those same books. In addition, it's offensive to me that there are people who think I'm either too stupid or too impressionable to read something and not immediately agree with everything in the book. I'm also not to dumb to recognize sarcasm, something that it prevalent in many of the banned/challenged books.

Needless to say, I think everyone should take a look at these lists (there are several of them), and then they should choose a couple of books to read. You'll probably find that you've already read a lot of them, and you might be surprised at some of the books on the list (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn anyone??).