Tuesday, September 30, 2008

No one cares if you ban a crappy book.

Yay, it's Banned Books Week. But not for ugly books. Only pretty, popular books get celebrated this week.

The ALA BBW press kit says, "Banned Books Week 2008 will kick off in Chicago, with a Read-Out! The event will feature popular banned or challenged authors and local Chicago celebrities..."

See? No one cares if unpopular books are banned or challenged or reconsidered or whatever you want to call it.

I would love to see the list of books that people have asked libraries to remove that were discarded without argument or protest. The librarian just looked at it and said, "you're right, that's crap and doesn't belong in our library; I don't know what I was thinking when I ordered it. Thanks for pointing it out."

A couple of weeks ago on the TV show House, the eponymous doctor was reading what looked like some bad porn novel with a title like Bondage Women in Prison; you know the ones with no cover art and filled with typos like vajina and oreola... like the ones I have on my bookcase over here. What if someone saw that episode and came in to get that book? And it was a real book. And no other library in the country owned it, but it was available from your book vendor? Would you buy a copy to fill the request?

No, you'd make some excuse about books requiring recommendations from a prominent review source even though half the books you buy are prepubs or mass-markets or popular titles with no reviews except on Amazon. You probably wouldn't buy a copy and no one would care.

I bet that happens in libraries every day. No one defends those books. Or reads them out loud at public events. But that's a banned book celebration I'd circle on my calendar.