Censorship is lame. Read a banned book today.

I just returned from a morning one-on-one composition tutoring session. It's "Banned Books Week" at the college library. Among the controversial selections are To Kill A Mockingbird (1960)-- a book I love so much that I want to name my first-born daughter after its author, Harper Lee, and Upton Sinclair's expose of capitalism and "wage slavery" in the meatpacking industry, The Jungle (1906). There's also some Orwell stuff and Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World (1913)-- my fave sci-fi book-- on display, along with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers, the second volume of The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) series. (You know where this is going.) In addition, J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye-- which allegedly inspired Mark Chapman to murder John Lennon-- was once banned. (Uh, sorry, but Mark Chapman inspired Mark Chapman to kill Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980. Anyone who claims that art inspires violence has serious issues, to say the least.) There's a number of other absolutely wonderful books, including poet Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, on the "banned" shelf as well. This little literary exhibit only serves to illustrate how sad and detrimental censorship is for a society. In short, censorship is lame. So protest this sad, detrimental, and lame practice-- and exercise your First Amendment rights-- by reading a banned book today.