It’s Banned Books Week — time to celebrate your right to read Women in Love, Ulysses, and other notables from the ALA’s list of banned or challenged books. Though, according to the Wall Street Journal, this is a whole lotta hoo-ha over nothing.
Cheers to You, Madame Bovary
‘Tiger’ Wins an Orange
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Welcome to Book Town
"Book lore and book history and everything around them, to do with libraries or culture, I think it centers so much of civilization." Atlas Obscura interviewed journalist Alex Johnson about his forthcoming title, Book Towns, which explores off-the-beaten-path towns bursting with bookshops.
Camus’ Web
Have you ever wondered what Charlotte’s Web would be like if Albert Camus joined the farm creatures? Well, someone wrote it for you at McSweeney’s. Pair with our review of Camus’ American Journals.
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Those Brits and Their Book Awards
Phillip Roth wins the Man Booker International prize (a lifetime achievement award that's a recent invention) and one of the judges steps down in protest. "I don't rate him as a writer at all."
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New Dave Eggers Book in October
It’s official, kids: Dave Eggers will publish a new novel this fall. Named The Circle, the book tells the story of Maeve Holland, a woman who takes a job at a Google-esque company in California. Despite the seemingly idyllic nature of the fictional company’s campus, Knopf assures us that the book is “a novel of suspense.”
Wow–thanks for pointing out the Mitchell Muncy WSJ op-ed. Muncy seems to feel that a 10% success rate in book banning is negligible; one wonders how high the percentage needs to be in order to be significant. Regardless, saying that attempted bannings don’t matter simply because the books weren’t ultimately banned is a little like saying that attempted murders aren’t a problem because the victims all survived–or that attempted terrorist attacks aren’t anything to worry about because they didn’t succeed. And his conclusion–that Banned Books Week is actually a form of *censorship*–is mind-boggling.
I’ve written a much longer response to the Muncy piece here:
http://fictionwritersreview.com/blog/banned-books-week-an-act-of-censorship-say-what
Thanks again for bringing this up.