TIE O’ THE DAY is a bigly fan of books, as you already know. We are also a house that mellows out by doing puzzles—especially when it is cold outside. Winter is puzzle season. I recently heard about some books being pulled off public library and school library shelves. And so I combined books and puzzling by completing this puzzle depicting a few of the book covers from books that have been banned in certain communities—some in the past and some currently. From July 2021 to June 2022, , according to the PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans, 1,648 books were banned—including 317 picture books for pre-schoolers. In Utah, the school districts that ban the most books appear to be Washington County School District and Canyons School District. I don’t think that’s something for those districts to be proud of.
I hope nobody likes reading books that exploit, or outright lie, or are poorly written. And as much as I would like such books to not show up on shelves of any kind, I think shutting down access to these books for people who might be interested in them by banning them is wrong. It is an egregious affront to our valued right of free speech. But one of the bigliest problems I have with the banning of books has to do with my experiences with those who try to get a book banned: most of these people that I have dealt with have, in fact, not read the book they want to prevent others from reading. They have based their outrage on what somebody’s cousin’s horse trainer’s postal carrier’s uncle told them—and that person likely did not read the book in its entirety either. I am reminded of the early 2000’s when people would tell me The Koran should be banned in the United States. (Pundits on some TV networks said the same thing.) Every time I heard someone say that, I asked if they had read it. I offered to have a chat about their reasons for thinking it should be banned. Of course, not one of these people had ever read the book. The only reason they could articulate was that it must be an evil book since it “caused” the 9/11 fiasco. As one who has read it, I can tell you this: there is not one idea in The Koran that would lead any Muslim to come up with such a terrorist plot. The message of The Koran is against everything that happened on that bloody day. The beautifully written holy book did not “cause” 9/11. Extremists who didn’t understand that The Koran is a book of peace were the fools who did all the damage.
I am proud to have read most of the “evil” books shown in the puzzle. The three stacks of books I’m posing by are just a few of the banned books I have in my own library. I am re-reading some of them to see if I can figure out more reasons someone would want to ban them in the first place. The top book in the middle stack is John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. And the top book on the stack closest to me is Alcoholics Anonymous—the so-called Big Book of AA. It has been banned merely because its subject has to do with drinking—more specifically, not drinking. As if that’s a bad thing. Go figure.