BANNED BOOK WEEK

I've always been the type to buck authority, "NO ONE TELLS ME WHAT TO DO!" That includes censoring my reading material.

A lot of my early sex education came from smuggled copies of everything from Grandmother Water's True Confession and True Romance magazines to the tattered copies of paperbacks like Lady Chatterly's Lover(online edition, I have a hardback copy in my bookshelves) and Fanny Hill-Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure(online edition) that were passed from preteen girl to preteen girl at school along with whispers of "Did you read this?" Speculation ran rampant about if OUR PARENTS actually did such things as:

............. for as soon as he had kiss'd me, he rolled down the bed-cloaths, and seemed transported with the view of all my person at full length, which he cover'd with a profusion of kisses, sparing no part of me. Then, being on his knees between my legs, he drew up his shirt and bared all his hairy thighs, and stiff staring truncheon, red-topt and rooted into a thicket of curls, which covered his belly to the navel and gave it the air of a flesh brush; and soon I felt it joining close to mine, when he had drove the nail up to the head, and left no partition but the intermediate hair on both sides.

Books have been banned for myriad reasons. Everything from the Bible to Tom Sawyer to Ulysses has been the "NO NO" list.

The American Library Association and many other organizations are fighting to help you keep the RIGHT to read what you please with Banned Books Week, taking place this year Sept. 23-30, sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Association of College Stores, and endorsed by the Library of Congress Center for the Book. At google.com/bannedbooks, you can use Google Book Search to explore some of the best novels of the 20th century which have been challenged or banned.

While libraries and bookstores around the country celebrate the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week with special readings, displays, and more, you just might end up with a visit to your local library or bookstore and an old favorite or a new banned book in hand.

You can find online books at these and lots of other locations on the web:
EServer, (founded in 1990, now based at Iowa State University).
The Online Book Page
The Internet Public Library
Page by Page Books
Project Gutenberg
Bibliomania (this one is nice)