Censorship. What do you feel when you read this word? In control? Controlled? Safe? September 24 through October 1 is Banned Book Week and the Internet is all abuzz. In fact, I even found a blog-hop giving away a box of “banned books”…apparently in celebration that these books are now openly available.

 Some of the titles previously (and in some cases, recently) banned may surprise you. The Canterbury Tales, Little Red Riding Hood, Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary—now that one is interesting! It is also humorous to note that a few of these dangerous reads were actually required reading in school such as The Grapes of Wrath and Lord of the Flies. How ironic.

For me, it would be easy to say that no book should ever be banned. Not every book should be available to minors, but to actually ban a book completely is absurd. What about freedom of speech—if a writer has something to say and other people want to read that message then… But, on the other hand, I can think of a few subjects that I honestly would not to see available to anyone—subjects that would make even Stephen King’s skin crawl.

 Would you agree that if a book was outright descriptive of horrible criminal behavior would this be grounds to ban? Of course, the next question is what constitutes “criminal” and who is the proper judge of that? History has many horror stories along those lines.

Feel free to share your thoughts…but, keep it clean. That’s right, I’ll be censoring.