Banned Books Week

What a slacker I am! I didn't even realize it was Banned Book Week here in the US! It's over on Saturday, but you should never stop reading banned books. In my opinion, the reason books are banned is because people can't handle the (sometimes difficult) truths in them. One of my favorite YA authors, Laurie Halse Anderson, deals with parents trying to ban her books from schools all the time. She has some very interesting posts on her LiveJournal about the effects these attempts can have on teens and their ability to cope with the things they handle every day.

A book I constantly recommend to people who are interested in reading banned books is her novel Speak. It's about a teen girl who is raped at a party the summer before her freshman year of high school. She withdraws into herself, has trouble expressing herself, and finds the strength to speak and reveal him only after a long school year of rejection, self-discovery, and ultimately an attempted second attack by her rapist. It teaches teens that they are strong enough to get through the trauma of rape, and that they need to speak up if something like that happens to them.

Another book of hers that I loved was Wintergirls, a novel about a teen girl caught in the spiral of anorexia. Throughout the book she counts the calories of everything she is forced to eat. Her life is a game of numbers and self-deprecation. She criticizes herself, says she's fat even though she's is near-death, and eventually almost dies. Even if this is something you have never dealt with, reading it will give you strength to help friends who may be suffering from an eating disorder. Or it may talk you out of developing one, or help you understand that you can conquer it if you do suffer from one.

These books are constantly being challenged in school districts because of their dark topics. Parents don't want their children to read about rape because they believe it exposes them to violence. At the same time, they have no problems letting their kids play violent video games, watch violent tv shows and movies, and talk violently to their friends. They don't want their kids to read about eating disorders because they believe it will lead them to develop one. All of this is ridiculously wrong, and yet they can't see it. And school districts let parents dictate what the kids can read, instead of leaving it up to the teachers.

When I was in high school, I was in 10th grade Enriched English. We were reading To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), a book that has been banned in the past and continues to receive challenges. My teacher wanted us to read a modern take on the novel, and decided that we should read A Time To Kill by John Grisham. Because of the violent rape scene that opens the book, we had to bring home permission slips to our parents. The slip explained the educational value and the reason we were reading the book. Not one parent objected. I guess you could say we lived in a progressive school district - we were also given the option to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that year, which is now facing calls to censor the n-word out (because there's absolutely no value in reading something in its historical context, right?). Thank goodness most of the criticism comes out on the side of the book and not the man responsible for the censorship, but the fact that it's being challenged at all is pretty crazy.

Banned books to me are actually a challenge - the people who challenge books are daring me: "Read it, read it if you dare." And I do. Oh, yes I do.

Progress

Well, I'm managing to make progress with the book hunt for the centerpieces. This past weekend, Chris and I went to Down in Denver Books and used the two Groupons I bought a while ago. $15 for $30 worth of books, and I bought two - so we got $60 worth of used books for $30. In total, we came away with 11 books, some of which will grace the tables at the wedding! I'll have to go back there because the prices are really good and a good chunk of the books are in hardcover.

I can't wait to be done planning! It's been fun matching people to tables and then to authors. I still have a lot of work to do on the seating charts though. Once that's done, then we can work on the escort cards. Chris's mom got me a bunch of library cards that we're going to use in Chris's typewriter, and then one of us will hand write the guests' names on them. Pretty neat idea, right?

On another note, I saw someone selling these nifty handbags at the Hancock Shaker Village Country Fair this weekend. The books they used were all weird, stuff I would never like, and they were kind of ugly, but I thought it was an interesting use for old books.

Destroy!

There has always been something blasphemous to me in destroying a book. When I worked at the bookstore, our mass markets were stripped of their covers for returns. The covers went back to the publisher as proof the books were destroyed, and the books themselves were thrown out. [Some may or may not have made their way onto my bookshelves…] This practice made me sad, except when it came to the destruction of romance novels, and books by James Patterson. I was doing the world a favor and I did it with glee! Just goes to show, even I have my (judgmental) flaws.

Stripping books by my favorite authors was hard, though. Towards the end of my time there the fantasy section was going through a purge, and I was directed to strip Terry Pratchett and Piers Anthony, among others, because their catalogues were so large and they weren’t selling. I should have seen the end of the store in this rationale, but instead I was lulled into the false belief that the store had been there forever, and always would. I directed my frustration at the management and the fact that I wasn’t really allowed to showcase the books I loved in favor of less stellar authors who just happened to sell better. In reality, the decline in sales because of e-books, Amazon and the big box stores really killed our ability to do more than shill the bestsellers.

In college I looked upon writing in school books as a terrible thing. I was shocked at first, seeing my classmates taking notes in the margins of their texts, and refused to do it myself. But I soon realized just how helpful it was to look just to the left or right of a highlighted sentence and see my own reactions, instead of having to turn to a page in my notebook that might not even make sense anyway. I started to take notes in the margins of anthologies (you should see my copy of Tradition and the Individual Talent), textbooks, and even novels. Spines were broken, pages fell out, and I’ve gone through at least two copies of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion because of all my notes and re-reads. Even my beloved Katharine Kerr books haven’t escaped. My tendencies changed with experience.

Before I worked at the bookstore, before I went to college, books were sacred. Sure I’d bend the spine, but I never intentionally destroyed books. The most writing I remember doing in them was my name in the front. Maybe a doodle when I was little. But books were treasured, and all the more special because someone took the time to write the words down. To some people books are just words on a page. To me books are worlds, and the words on the page are the images that show us these worlds. Why would I want to defile them with my own words, or through rips and tears?

Over the last few years I have seen books used in all sorts of projects. Mostly, the books are dismantled, or cut to pieces, spines taken apart to be used as boxes or other bindings, pages stamp-cut into shapes and used for decorations. When my out-of-town maid of honor suggested using these punch-outs as table decorations at my upcoming wedding, I was not cool with it. Cut up my favorite books? Blasphemy! But she brought a couple examples out while visiting this summer, and I was swayed. They looked great, and they come from some of my favorite texts. A double win! My bridal shower was this weekend, and she made huge heart fans out of Emma, one of Jane Austen’s greatest love story novels, and set them inside the flower centerpieces. They looked absolutely beautiful and I know that the tables at the wedding are going to be just as great.

So I guess you could say I’ve taken a new view of books. I joined in a garage sale at my parents’ house this summer and went through my bookcases looking for things to get rid of. My friends expressed shock and surprise when they heard I got rid of books. Me. The book hoarder. The one who prefers owning to borrowing, even if the book wasn’t good. And to tell the truth, I sold a few books I actually liked because I knew I’d never read them again. That was a first for me. It actually made me happy to tell the person looking at the book that I loved it, thought it was great, but just didn’t see a re-read in my future. I hope they liked the books as much as I did!

I have also started swapping on Goodreads. It’s a great way to pass along books I can’t sell, and I don’t have to pay anything to send them out. Unfortunately my apartment is in a state of chaos right now so I’ve had to deny a few requests because I couldn’t find the books. Once the wedding is over I plan on going through all my shelves with a fine-toothed comb and deciding what I can and cannot live without. I already have a few books pegged for removal. Hopefully sometime soon I can get a barcode scanner and catalogue them all too.

Over time my views on books as tangible objects have changed. I write in them. I break the spines. [But only on mass markets.] I allow them to be cut up in the name of decoration. I SELL THEM! Who is this person I have become? Is this a bad thing? Have I betrayed the one interest that never let me down? I hope not. I hope that in the future my love for books can transcend anything I do to them physically, because the words will be in my heart always.

Plus, I can always get another copy, right?