Tag: banned books week

Banned Books Week

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn banned books week

I suspect that a lot of us feel a great distance between our reading habits and banned books because we don’t go to the library or have children who are impacted by what’s suddenly not available in the classroom or the school library.  We live busy lives. So if a book is banned in Peoria, we have little or no reason to notice it because nobody is stopping us from buying and reading the book.

This year, Banned Books Week runs between October 1-7.  According to one of the sponsors, the American Library Association (ALA), “This year’s theme is ‘Let Freedom Read.’ When we ban books, we’re closing off readers to people, places, and perspectives.”

According to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, “This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials. Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs.” The number of challenged books and attempted bans is increasing.

You can find a list of Banned Books Week events here, along with book ban data.

We need to be aware of all this,  I think, to protect our freedom to read what we want even if the issues appear to be far away.

—Malcolm

Friday’s potpourri

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri5 Comments

Yeah, I know, I’m supposed to save these news roundup posts until Sunday, but the week’s been strange.

  • We moved into this house, which we built new, in 2014, and since then the land has destroyed three mowers, leaving us with nothing at present to mow the lawn with. So, the fourth tractor is on order. If it weren’t for the continuing supply chain woes, some or all of these mowers could have been repaired–if anyone could get parts or employees to accomplish the task. Our mowers really weren’t built for such rough land or such high grass. So, they break down even though they’re nighly rated. Yes, we’re the 5th generation of the family to live here, but we didn’t expect that maintaining “the lawn” would become such a chore.
  • When “Bones” began airing on TV in 2005, my wife and I watched all the episodes. Now, with our “regular” TV shows on hiatus for the summer, we’re watching them again when we can’t find an old movie that fits our mood. The show is loosely based on the books and career of forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs. After all these years, I finally became curious about her novels of which there are over thirty. So, I ordered the latest for a change of pace, reading-wise. Now I’ll find out how the Temperance Brennan in print compares with the Temperance Brannan on TV played by actress Emily Deschanel. This will be a change from Winterkill and The Watchmaker of Dachau. I’m looking forward to something that’s new to me.
  • I’ve finally found a way to include short excerpts from my novels on my limited-space website. I’ve stolen half of the ABOUT page. I decided nobody needed to know that much about me when they did need to know more about the flavor of the books. The HOME page now has a picture of a book with the word “excerpt” superimposed over it that links to the current excerpt. I began with Fate’s Arrows, the most recent novel in the Florida Folk Magic series.
  • Current temperatures here are in the 80s, decent weather for cutting grass if all of our mowers weren’t broken down. And we’ve gone without rain for several days as well. We’re fortunate that we don’t have a SoCal rainfall from tropical storm Kay or an Alaska weather problem from an incoming typhoon.
  • According to Publishers Weekly, “ALA officials reported 681 documented attempts to ban or restrict library resources in schools, universities, and public libraries through the first eight months of 2022, on pace to shatter the 729 challenges ALA tracked in 2021. The challenges thus far in 2022 have targeted some 1,651 different titles—already more than during all of 2021—with some 70% of this year’s challenges targeting multiple titles. In past years, most challenges sought to remove or restrict a single title.” This is a good time to be aware of banned books week.

–Malcolm