Banned books bracelet
Books that set the world on fire should not be set on fire by the world.
There’s no time like Banned Books Week for picking up some incendiary reading. We don’t really need an excuse to revisit a classic or two, but librarians like to remind us at this time of year that some books are still endangered.
With this week’s revelations about the Bush administration’s view of Harry Potter — not to mention last year’s news about Sarah Palin’s book-banning ways — this issue is freakishly contemporary. This year, the American Library Association created an interactive map showing recent attempts to ban books. And the ALA store is selling a banned books bracelet so you can turn your right to read into an accessory. (Thanks to Pop Candy for the link.)
If you don’t feel like wearing books, you can still read them (thankfully). A few famously banned books:
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Ulysses, James Joyce (Good luck with that one.)
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
When the act of reading a book is subversive and charming in one fell swoop, we like that.
Charm-o-Matic 
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