Banned books: Read them!

Ask anyone who knows me about my love of books. They will all tell you to a man that I am obsessed with them. My car is full of them. My bedroom is stacked with them waist high. My chair in the living room is surrounded by boxes stuffed with book and stacks of books on top of those. I have yet to discover bookshelves. I think I’m the only person around that carries an “emergency reading book” in my ruck sack, a little something to read in case I come up short at my favorite restaurant for my afternoon coffee or late lunch. I could be starving and I will find a way to buy another book. So yeah, you can safely say I got it bad for anything of the printed word.

Now as the days get shorter, the leaves turn that lush gold, the termination dust creeps down towards the valley and the air turns a distinct winter chill – the perfect time to curl up with a good book to warm the soul by. Let’s take it a step further and do it for a worthy cause as well. What is that worthy cause you are no doubt wondering? It is about Banned Books Week.

Banned books? Yes, banned books. These are works that have been pulled off library and bookstore shelves over the years by who can only be called mindless zealots. Zealots who think they alone can dictate who and what one can read, thus taking away a precious freedom in name of cultural purity, or something stupid like that on those lines.

So from September 27th to October 3rd, for readers like myself in the world this will be Banned Books Week, a perfect time to pick up a book banned by others and do the one thing those in the so called know what’s better for us hate – read them. Living minds want a living book. That is, a book that is being read and enjoyed. A mind opened up, a human mind to expand and explore. It is the food for thought literally. Some who would have our minds starve or only fed from one restricted source are behind a good deal of those book bans. And in extreme cases book burnings. I shudder at that one.

The list is long. Some of the books and authors that made the list may surprise you. Some are beloved classics like the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by one of my favorite authors Samuel Clemens who is known by millions as Mark Twain. Or the eye opener “Bury My heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown, the brutally honest history of the plight of Native Americans in U.S. history from their point of view. It pulls no punches whatsoever. I just reacquired a copy of this book last week from one of my numerous thrift store hops. It blew my mind in high school and it should do so in adulthood.

Or how about a science fiction favorite of mine, Ray Bradbury’s dark vision in “Fahrenheit 451,” which describes a world where all books are forbidden and firemen are used not to fight fires but to start fires to burn books and arrest their owners. Imagine a world where owning and reading a book is a crime. I would face life in prison for my collection alone in that terrible vision of the future. The 3,000 plus books I own would burn for a long time.

Here is a one that got me saying “what the heck” while researching for this article. A blockbuster fantasy that spawned an Oscar award series of movies recently, “Lord of the Rings” by the first master of fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien. I love Middle Earth and return there every other year since I was a young boy of nine. To see this making the banned book list is shocking to say the least.

Now what can you do about these books and others during Banned Book Week? Well that is easy to answer. Simply find a book on that list (you can Google it) buy it, borrow it or check it out; take it home or to your favorite place to spend quiet time in. Then sit down, crack it open and read. That’s it. Read the book that unthinking people want to keep away from the masses. They would want to bury it in ignorance and censorship. By reading those books we are digging up treasures for the mind that have been kept from us.

What books am I reading for this event? Good question, since I have had a head start for this. I am reading two at this time – one for home and one for the road. The first is from an author whose books have been banned several times. “The Autobiography of Mark Twain” was a thrill to find and read of one of my all time favorite writers. The second is one I have never read before. This lack of my reading education is being remedied for my on the road reading. The book in question has been the subject of many a book ban over the years: “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. An excellent book that is proving to be one I’m kicking myself for not reading earlier.

Books are as vital to the mind as air is for the lungs, food and water for the body. They evoke every human emotion. They can take us to the stars or be there as man puts a footprint on the moon for all mankind. They can fling us back millions of years to walk with dinosaurs or uncover the mysteries of our origins as a species. They teach us the history of our nation and the world. Books can take us on spiritual journeys of faith and wonder. The possibilities are endless.

I am a lover of the written word, a bibliophile. I am doing my part for my love of books, how about you? Go out there and read a banned book!

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service. Write to him at news@frontiersman.com