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
Bibliomania
Time to confess: what books have you stolen?
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Stories in Verse
In 2010, the poet Tarfia Faizullah traveled to Bangladesh to speak with the survivors of the 1971 Liberation War. Eventually, she wrote a poetry collection about those interviews, which went on to win the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. At The Paris Review Daily, Sean Carman interviews Faizullah.
Too Much to Process
A couple weeks ago, Brian Ted Jones reviewed The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, which “takes place on the margins of a grand, cosmic struggle.” Not long afterwards, at The Rumpus, Woody Brown offered a somewhat negative take on the book, arguing that Mitchell makes it too difficult for the reader to suspend her disbelief. You could also read Brown’s Millions review of Haruki Murakami’s new novel.
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Infographic: Shakespeare, Murder, and Pies
This week in book-related infographics: a look at the deaths and murders in Shakespeare's works. Our favorite illustration? The pies that once were Chiron and Demetrius (from Titus Andronicus).
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Spalding Gray’s Secrets
Nell Casay, editor of The Journals of Spalding Gray, takes readers through the tortured life of the famous actor, playwright, and monologuist.
Sunday Reading
Booksellers from NYC's famous indie bookstore McNally Jackson share 5 book recommendations with Harper's Bazaar. Elsewhere, The Daily Beast has collected the best long reads of the past week.
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“I’m going out on this adventure”
“The idea was that whatever I felt or did resonated in life, caused people pain or happiness. This gave me a feeling of huge responsibility even as a child – to the extent that sometimes I had to block my own feelings or wishes. When I started writing fiction, suddenly I was allowed to do what I wanted.” Talking with Etgar Keret.
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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.