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dianna
21st September 2013, 14:18
http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/sites/default/files/BBW13_VirtualReadout_logo.jpg


Are you looking for a way to celebrate your freedom to read during Banned Books Week? Consider participating in the Banned Books Virtual Read-out!

Since the inception of Banned Books Week in 1982, libraries and bookstores throughout the country have staged local read-outs—a continuous reading of banned/challenged books—as part of their activities. For the third year in a row, readers from around the world can participate in the Banned Books Virtual Read-Out by creating videos proclaiming the virtues of the freedom to read that will be featured on a dedicated YouTube channel.
http://www.youtube.com/bannedbooksweek


Books banned 2012-2013:


http://youtu.be/hOcbT_kT-z4

http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/virtualreadout

Calabash
22nd September 2013, 11:05
http://www.banned-books.org.uk/all

The above is a list of banned books, many of which will have been read by people on the forum. While it's interesting to know why these books have been banned in the particular countries concerned, it highlights the amount of power and control that any controlling body is able to inflict on a nation. Awful.

Many years ago I lived in Haiti and before the plane landed at Port au Prince I was handed a list of banned books. One of them (unsurprisingly) was Graham Green's "The Comedians", which was set in the Papa Doc years, which I was reading, and handed over. After only a few days living in Haiti, it was apparent that a very oppressive regime (Baby Doc Duvalier) was in control. Just as an anecdote, a few weeks later a friend and I went to a restaurant called the Hole in the Wall which had been recommended to us. When we arrived, it was full of the President’s Guard, who were known locally as The Leopards. There were at least 10 huge glowering men in uniform sitting eating in absolute silence. (It was a bit like that Calsberg advert where two ordinary people arrive at a cinema where the audience is made up of Hairy Bikers and Hell’s Angels and the only two seats left are in the middle of the auditorium.) Anyway, there we were, sitting rather uncomfortably eating chicken and rice when we noticed the black and white tv on the wall which was playing a newsreel of the old president’s funeral. The dialogue was in French Haitian BUT the background music was The Wall by Pink Floyd. We broke into a sweat at hearing “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control. . . .” and suffered terrible indigestion. We didn’t stay for desert. I guess the moral of the story is that you can keep people down . . . . but not all the time