Blog Hop - October 5-11

This weeks Blog Hop is hosted by Soon Remembered Tales. Question: Banned Books Week ends on the 6th. How do you feel about books being challenged to be banned from libraries or schools? Have you read any banned books?

I actually have quite a large collection of previously banned books. In my opinion the books that have been banned are the ones that are very thought provoking, have important messages and really just worth reading, (also, who doesn't feel rather cool toting around Henry Miller...) In fact when I first got my laptop a few years ago I saved the American Library Association's list of banned or challenged books to my favourites as a "to buy" list! I always find it so amazing looking at the things that were banned less than a hundred years ago, things that people don't bat an eye at in today's society, look at the first 20 titles on the list; 

I've read the majority of these novels and in our time with most of them I'd never guess there had ever been any question about their readability. The idea of censorship in general really rubs me up the wrong way. I don't like the thought of what I see or read being controlled, but apart from being aware there's really not anything we can do about it, everything is controlled, if it's not by the government it's by the media and occasionally a book will come along which doesn't cater to the parameters of what's deemed acceptable; thus banned books!

 So, How do I feel about the banning of books? In a word: Angry! Sex exists, violence exists, drugs exist, you can't change the existence of these things so why try to halt people's awareness of them? It's so backwards for people to believe that just because you can't see or read about something then it just doesn't exist! As far as I'm concerned we should judge for ourselves if we're prepared to read about something, if we're not we can just close the book, the option of picking it up at all is what matters...I think I may have written more than the hop really asked for here so I'll stop my little rant now. I'm really looking forward to reading what everyone else has to say about this subject.