The Absurdity of Banning Books

First, I went out and bought 8 books for my grandchildren today. None of them are banned. They were innocuous children’s books but it was my own little support of the book industry.

My stomach literally roils when I think of book banning. My first thoughts are of the Spanish Inquisition. Telling people don’t read that is akin to saying don’t look down when you are climbing. The first thing you do is look down. If the narrow minded idiots who seek to ban books really want to succeed, they should make whatever book they are trying to suppress required reading in the schools. This would curb the enthusiasm of the teens for whatever they are striving to ban.

My own recollection of restricted, not banned but restricted, books was in the town library. Children under 16 were not allowed to read books in the adult section. Of course that meant they must be better than the ones I was allowed to read. After I successfully read the children’s section of the Library my Dad got me dispensation to take out books from the ADULT section. Well, it wasn’t as adult as I had thought. This was long before the terminology of Adult was ascribed to porn so that wasn’t my surprise. My surprise was there was so little difference besides length of story. I never did figure out what they were protecting us from.

I do have to say that my love of reading and now writing must be laid at the feet of my father. He read constantly and encouraged all of us to read. Dad was the most well read person I ever met, ever! He graduated from high school but never had the opportunity to go further in his education so he made up for that by reading everything he could acquire. His love of reading has trickled down to great grandchildren who love books. All due to one very humble man’s love of reading.

He wasn’t perfect. Dad made a rash assumption years ago about the musical, Jesus Christ Superstar. I was in a way, way,way, way off Broadway production of it and I asked him if he had listened to it. He shamefacedly admitted he hadn't, so I bought him a copy. He listened and he ended up using it to teach his Sunday school class of "young' adults. He generated a lot of controversy in that little church particularly when he was so outspoken about his own willingness to ban something before listening (reading) to it. I was always proud of my Dad but I truly busted my buttons when he dropped the needle on that LP and opened the eyes of his fellow parishioners.

So my love of reading led me to writing. Today I am writing to remind anyone who reads this that banning books is paramount to national suicide. If we let radicals of any stripe dictate what we read and how we then think our nation will perish. Succinctly it is patriotic to read!

Go out and buy a book!  Preferably go out and buy one of my books but if not mine, buy somebody’s book or get one out of the library.

Be proud to be a reader!