Beat The Ban

Tomorrow marks the start of Banned Books Week, a yearly event since 1982 sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Library Association, Association of American Publishers, American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores.

As this report says:

"Who has not encountered Ulysses by James Joyce or Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird at some point in his or her educational career? The Grapes of Wrath by John Updike, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker have all landed on the banned book list at some point, as have Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, and ironically, Fahrenheit 451, a fictional account of a futuristic society in which books are burned, by Ray Bradbury. Mark Twain's look at late 19th Century life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has found itself on and off the list of banned books for many years, as has John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men."

Go get your hands on them. And remember, The Grapes of Wrath is by Steinbeck, not Updike.