Missives From Troy

It is the week of “celebrating” banned books and I’m not going to wade into the whole debate of whether banning books is okay or not, because I come down pretty firmly on the “not” side of that particular argument for a multitude of reasons. This week’s 10 Things was almost a list of the weirdest or least obvious banned books (“Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?”, “The Light In The Attic”, etc.), but to be frank, that’s what everyone is doing this week. So instead I bring you a collection of links, some about banned books, some just about reading, and a few about the joys and miseries of being a bibliophile.

1. Banned Books Week website. Read pertinent articles, take part in fundraising auctions or the virtual read-out, and just generally get your banned book solidarity on.
2. The History of Little Golden Books. An article on the history of those instantly recognizable board books with the gold foil binding and the role this line of children’s lit has had in the lives of school children far and wide.
3. The Illinois Library Association’s Banned Books Bibliography. Download pdfs with complete year-by-year listings of banned and challenged books. Has your favorite book made the list yet?
4. Obituary: Borders Books And Music. An interesting and personal perspective on the closing of the Borders bookstore chain and how it affects readers in ways large and small.
5. Book Envy. AngryComics lets us know that it’s natural to experience envy at someone else’s book collection.
6. Just Like A Woman: On Jane Austen’s Brand Of Sentimental Education. A thoughtful article on Jane Austen’s role as the most recognizable female author to date (and on the trivialization of her material), as a rebuttal to VS Naipul’s comments on the relative worth of female contributions to the literary world.
7. Shakespearean Insults. Because having a way with words and a large vocabulary is really about how creative the mud-slinging can get.
8. Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, as read by Benedict Cumberbatch. I expect that the title here explains it all, but for those who need it more explicitly stated: an English thespian reads a story about humans turning into enormous bugs as penned by Franz Kafka. Just in time for Halloween.
9. 17 Banned Books You Read As A Child. A few titles on this list are genuinely surprising, especially as I can vividly remember them being on the shelf in my school’s library (and on those book order forms I used to salivate over; anyone remember those?). Frankly, it’s always the reasoning that gets me, especially the “irreverence for adults” and “too mature for age group” labels. Have these people met any children lately?
10. Irony Photographed. Another reference to Borders’ closing, just because it’s a genuinely depressing turn of events and the juxtaposition of the timing of the closed doors running up against the message of this week is starkly poignant for the state of things in general. Also, it’s a cool picture.