TIE O’ THE DAY is proud to present some memes about reading and libraries. I’m not usually a meme-poster, but every time the culture chatter starts up about banning a certain book from a school library or a public library, I make it a point to read the book. I want to see for myself what all the hubbub is about. Often, the people who want a book banished, haven’t even read the book. They’ve just “heard about” it from someone else who likely hasn’t read it either. It’s my book-reading opinion that “hearing about” a book, and the rumored dangers of its ideas, does not qualify anyone to call for its banishment from public availability. If you haven’t read a book in its entirety, I think you cannot possibly have anything close to a valid, informed opinion of it. You cannot engage in an honest discussion about its merits without knowing the full context of any book’s alleged offending word, sentence, paragraph, chapter, or ideas.
Personally, I like to be reading at least one banned book at any given time. With the probably hundreds of banned-somewhere books I have read in my life, I have yet to meet one that I agree should be metaphorically put to death. Oh, I’ve read plenty of books nobody has sought to ban that I think have nothing to add to a library, due to being badly written or manipulative or presenting lies as factual, etc. But I still think they have a right to exist. I do take pity on those books’ readers, though.
Before I die, I intend to start a book club called something along the lines of the Banned Book-of-the-Month Club, where people who’ve read the book can discuss exactly what it is about the book that might make somebody think it is too dangerous for potential readers’ minds, and why they feel so threatened by the words on a page. And I don’t doubt we will also discuss what makes some people think they are the bossy arbiters of the planet’s literature. 📚