Banned Books Week is coming up again at the end of September, and as usual, I find myself deeply annoyed by the literary Karens who keep making mountains out of molehills.
You see, there's a funny thing about popular literature. Like pop music, it doesn't generally stick around. Sometimes, something like 50 Shades of Grey makes a big splash, but just a few years later, no one cares. It's a flash in the pan. Even big-name authors like John Grisham, James Patterson, and Danielle Steel find their highly-promoted works fading into obscurity very quickly. Few children's books have any real staying power, either.
But right now, the LGBTQIA+ (the acronym keeps growing) topics are atop the banned and challenged lists. I get it. We're in a culture where conflict over LGBTQIA+ topics is a hot-button issue. Partisan politics plays a role. Publishers wanting to cash in on the commotion play a role. And Karens who can't live and let live no matter how much they live, laugh, love just trigger the Streisand Effect and keep every new moral outrage in the news long after its shelf life should have expired.
We are also in the era of cancel culture, and even perennial target of censorship J. K. Rowling is not immune to complaints. Her audience split between outrage and solidarity over her commentary on transgender issues. I have my own opinions on the subject, but her analysis strikes me as based on a genuine concern for the well-being of others. Nonetheless, she is now being excoriated as an icon of hate herself.
As such, Karen-ism seems to manifest itself with equal blind self-righteousness on the Woke Left and the Puritanical Right. However, the Karens of the Right seems to complain to library managers the most, and as a result, guess what gets put in the spotlight? The MAGA crowd seems hell-bent on promoting their opposition through the libraries lately. Over in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, there was a much-publicized incident of deliberate book concealment that resulted in the creation of a special Unhideable Edition of Stephen Colbert's Whose Boat Is This Boat?
I have no shortage of complaints about the left, but around here at least, I don't see protests demanding the removal of our C. S. Lewis books or the Inspirational Romance collection. So I beg you, readers, whatever your politics, un-bunch your panties and stow your complaints. Apply the Golden Rule, and mind that beam before you start pointing out motes, OK?
Libraries exist to serve everyone. That means things you dislike will be there. Things you like which other people do not will also be there. That is the entire idea of a public library. If the library collection were up to my tastes alone, 95% of the collection would be gone. There's theology I don't like, politics I don't like, books I find anywhere from boring to utterly distasteful, kids books I think are a waste of space... But y'know what? Everyone has different tastes, and that is OK.
Mind-blowing, right?
Censorship of any kind kills dialogue, and if you try, you can tolerate and respect other people even while disagreeing with everything they believe. If we are going to make any progress toward healing the growing divide in this country, it has to be by taking the first step ourselves, even if we don't thing the other side (whoever that may be) is willing to reciprocate.
And in the end, the pop culture stuff you don't like will most likely fade into obscurity on its own in short order, so just let it go.
As a person with a Master of Library Science degree, I ignore all the pc garbage that comes out of the American Library Assoc. However, I do despise censorship of any kind. My philosophy of education is that you expose children to the best examples of literature from all times and places. Once they read enough of the good stuff, they will weed out the mediocre and the bad all by themselves. Banning something just makes it more attractive to kids.
Agreed. I started pulling books to display yesterday afternoon, and my focus will be on the classics, many of which do warrant criticism for their philosophical foundation and content, but still should not be banned.
Nice rant. And you're right: it's a public library, so its contents need to appeal to all sorts of people with all sorts of literary tastes. I still haven't read any of the Harry Potter books; there are so many books I want to read, I have to choose with care these days. Maybe I'd like them, and maybe I wouldn't. Meanwhile, they aren't hurting me by resting on the library bookshelf.
The Harry Potter books are brilliant. The films fall utterly short (but then, what film doesn't?).
In my personal opinion, only books worth reading get banned. My reading list is full of them. I LOVE banned books!
By the way, the LGBTQIA+ people have now embraced the label of GRSM (Gender, Romantic, or Sexual Minority) to keep the label from getting longer. Of course, if you want to make fun of them (as I do), just call them the LGBTQXYZ or "alphabet soup" people.
I don't want to make fun of people who I suspect are battling myriad mental and emotional problems, but when they try to wield political power against their enemies, I will make fun of them just like I do the puritanical right.
Many great works have indeed been challenged or banned over the years. That is what I intend to encourage people to read in our display this year.
All good reads. Don't forget The Hobbit and Through the Looking Glass. I wish I could recommend The Silmarillion to anyone who isn't a massive Tolkien nerd like myself, but it reads more like a history book than a novel.
I used The Silmarillion in a British Lit class at a homeschool coop. We didn't use it all, but I did assign the creation myth at the beginning and the story of Beren and Luthien, of course.
Cool! Did you use any King Arthur literature? I read The Mabinogion during "high school" (I was homeschooled for all but two years of my life, and I took a lot of college courses during that time) and several other books from that era. I even picked up a copy of The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, but that was just for fun.
I am revisiting this old post as a reference in a new one, and I see I missed this thread! I have the Dover Thrift Edition of The Mabinogion, mostly because I wnated to see the source legends referenced in Stephen R. Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle novels. Have you read those?
I have not, I guess I'll add them to my personal reading list (so many books, so little time).