Celebrate Banned Books Week 2009

If you wander into your local bookstore or library within the next week, it’s likely you will see a shrine of sorts to banned books. Those who ban books work to lock up particular controversial writing from readers, but an equally as strong and passionate force works to keep these books freely available. Enter: Banned Books Week.

Banned Books Week is held during the last week of September in order to bring light to banned and challenged books. This week serves to celebrate the freedom to read what you want and to continue in a forceful march to keep writing available to all of the public. So, from September 26 to October 3, there will be efforts all over the country to bring banned books to the forefront–to showcase them as worthy, safe, and accessible works.

Internet Archive offers a collection of banned books in this collection to get you ready for the week. Some of the most famous banned books are highlighted below:

The Fairy Tales of Brothers Grimm
The Jungle
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
O Pioneers!
Black Beauty
The War of the Worlds

Read through these classics and crack your Ginsberg, Rowling, Nabakov, or Steinbeck this week. Celebrate your freedom to read, because unfortunately some of our best writers have been sanctioned to book prison.

–Cara Binder

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27 thoughts on “Celebrate Banned Books Week 2009

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  3. Huckup

    One for me very curious list of banned books on the Brothers Grimm is one example for me even as a child to the standart readings are only fairy-nich, it has hurt me. I would like to know where and who has banned these tags?

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  5. janes Onu

    I though I should see “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie in the list of your most famous banned books. What do you think?

  6. John

    My guess is that the most banned book in history, in terms of the numbers of people refused access, is the Bible. Any stats on this?

  7. Tim

    I would say if it isnt the most banned book it is quickly rising to the top of the list!! Especially now days it is looked upon as if it were the satanic bible.

  8. vixi

    Janes Onu`s suggestion of the Satanic verses is no treat, as it is only fiction and opinion, eg: what racist white author writting a book about blacks. But the gem would be the BANNED BIBLES that the VATICAN houses some, to protect & reserve the main stream modern Judaic christian religions, like the gospel of Judas, Barnabas, mark and many more to be found ,that are facts not fiction.

  9. vixi

    here alist of banned books we wish to see :

    life of christ – David Fredrick Strauss

    the origin of palestinians and their geneticrelatidness with other Med population – Robin Makie

    Vision of ecstacy ( film/book) -Axell lltd

    poem about crucifiction – Denis Leman

    a list of about 50-60 banned Gospels

    please can someone tell me how to get hold of any of them ?

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  11. tangolimagolf

    It is ironic you bible thumpers would whine about your holy book being banned when the list here is, in the main, books banned and attempted to be banned by the very people you are. Christian book banning has a long and noble tradition based on the notion that any view expressing even a smidgen of tolerance to other views than Christian views must be swept from society because of the threat they post to “decent people.”

    I suggest a compromise. Stop trying to force the entire civilization to bend their knees to your divine spirit. There are viewpoints that are as completely legitimate as yours and the pose no threat whatever to your fables and myths. You wave the flag of oppression if anyone dares to suggest you are not the center of the universe and fly into rages when people of honor and courage dare to present views not your own.

    You are a bunch of sick fucks.

    1. tranquility

      Thanks for your post on knowledge rush dated 12/20/09. I heartily agree ! I cringe when I think of the destruction of life and property that has taken place over the last 2000 years because of the self-righteous views of this group.

    2. sfernando

      man the hate these commenter have for christans these are sort of ppl that ban books.
      i bet tangolimagolf a perfect example of an atheist bigot will burn books just like a cowardly nazi.

    3. Allan

      Tangolimagolf, I can only hope that you will be banned from ever again spewing out your nonsensical stupidity. Doesn’t your family know that those under 12 years of age ought to be supervised while using the internet?

    4. Wroger Wroger

      God is with us – said Adolf and the Christians said.

      God does not exist and you have been contaminated and must be purged – Joseph the man of steel said.

      God is on our side, our cause is righteous and Saddam is a bad man – said George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Winston “bum-licker” Howard.

      1. Wroger Wroger

        List of UN – Banned Books:

        The US Government and the Pentagon’s Military essays called “Jesus is Fraud” books on the WIKI Leaks – “The Invasion of Iraq – Civilian Deaths and Torture”.

        “Depleted Uranium Weapons are not nuclear weapons” by George “the Brain Damaged Drug Fucked Idiot” Bush.

  12. Sharon

    Banned books, burnt libraries, outlawed languages and even banned individual letters of the alphabets (especially the letter Q) have all been used as weapons to wipe out the historical memories of cultures for the sole purpose of raping them for profit. Thousands of languages have been lost as a result. Today the majority of us don’t even know who our ancestors where. The last hundred years have seen little improvement in banned/taboo knowledge because governments allow ‘religions’ to operate tax free. Today we have the internet and it is considered so dangerous to gov. that they have recently given themselves the power to shut it down if it’s seen as a threat to ‘national security’. Religion and politics have deliberately kept us ignorant of our past and killed or destroyed anyone or anything that might serve to liberate us for the sole purpose of ensuring profits. We no longer need to wonder why 2% of the population owns 98% of the wealth.

  13. sweeney276

    Look, don’t get your knickers in a twist (as we say here in the UK). If books have been banned, that’s all that’s needed for them to be included.

    It doesn’t matter by who or why they have been banned, although I agree it would be useful to know that.

    What “standard” is used to determine banning? Is it enough that my local library won’t obtain a copy (if only for reasons of budgetary control), or that the content would “tend to deprave or corrupt” (to use one British legal phrase)?

    To my mind the most interesting are those books banned because of political content (such as books burnt by the Nazis or those books banned or restricted by Communist countries) or religious content (such as those books banned by the Vatican, or Puritans in the Commonwealth around the times of the English Civil Wars). It all depends on what you class as “banned” books…

  14. enderby

    An old post, but is the vixi post for real?
    Fiction has no place on the list? lost gospels are fact?
    Not that is should matter if you are not an ignorant racist, but Rushdie might be surprised to learn he is white. Suggest you tell him. Satanic Verses made me want to learn more about the Koran, and not in a destructive sense.
    note – e.g. means “for example,” i.e. means “that is.”
    This post is a great example of why books are banned and civilization is getting dumber. Maybe we should ban all books vixi does not like. Then in the future we could use the list for a banned books list.

    A banned books list probably depends on the timeline. For example, include Gargantua & Pantagruel, but also include Slaughterhouse 5. You can keep going further back in time and include lost cultures, but there comes a point where we just won’t be able to relate to the history or understand the writing. Cave drawings are probably not understandable by anyone except vixi.

  15. Dan Hunt

    I suspect that Christianity has literally tons of banned books and pages that would confuse or prove much of the Bible to be wrong. Miles of tunnels beneath the Vatican hide more than we’ll ever know.

    Sure some have banned the Bible, but hidden away or lost forever are just too many records.

    I would suppose that more Christians have banned books than there are Chrstian books that have been banned. In some cases the Christians have banned their own Bible if it was not written in Latin.

    So, I can only assume that the greatest book banners are the Christians of our world.

  16. Dan Hunt

    I suspect that Christianity has literally tons of banned books and pages that would confuse or prove much of the Bible to be wrong. Miles of tunnels beneath the Vatican hide more than we’ll ever know.

    Sure some have banned the Bible, but hidden away or lost forever are just too many records.

    I would suppose that more Christians have banned books than there are Chrstian books that have been banned. In some cases the Christians have banned their own Bible if it was not written in Latin.

    So, I can only assume that the greatest book banners are the Christians of our world.

    How many of you have banned “The Origin of Species”.

  17. Christopher R Thompson

    Let’s have a round of applause for the banners of books (not that i wish them any success)! They provide me with the best reading list that I could possibly hope for.
    Love to all. Keep the dialog going.
    Kit

  18. D Smith

    To those of you who use vulgar words when you want to refer to someone or something you appear to hate eg Christians, do you think you can win anyone
    over to your side. Love works! Hate destroys! Which are you?

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