True or False , Banning A Book Makes it More Likely to be Read

[Ian Fortytwo]

The Spycatcher, by Peter Wright, comes to mind, it officially banned across the UK, however I bought a copy somewhere in Dorset. Read it, and thought it was fiction.

 

[Rodders]

There can't be that many banned books these days, can there? The last book i remember being banned was Salmon Rushdie's Satanic Verses and even then, it was in Muslim countries.

The free publicity that Rushdie received as a result of the banning certainly helped sales, but it didn't interest me.

 

[tobl]

There can't be that many banned books these days, can there? The last book i remember being banned was Salmon Rushdie's Satanic Verses and even then, it was in Muslim countries.
The free publicity that Rushdie received as a result of the banning certainly helped sales, but it didn't interest me.

there are lots ob banned books. lots and lots
Google Books: Celebrate Your Freedom to Read
Banned Books | Online Library of Liberty (libertyfund.org)
Banned Books Online (upenn.edu)
Lists of banned books - Wikipedia

 

[Vladd67]

A lot of books that are banned these days seem to be banned by School boards rather than governments.

 

[luriantimetraveler]

The American Librarian Association tracks the most challenged and banned books — agree with @Vladd67 that challenges seem to come less from government than from individuals or advocacy groups who find something offensive in a text and believe access should be restricted for all.

 

[K. Riehl]

I worked for a large chain store in Boston for a decade. I told my staff to refer all requests to ban a book to me. Some of the reasons given by people, It's anti-whichever political party. It is associated with (name your religion). It will corrupt the children. Women's bodies should not be on display. It is written by a gay/trans/whatever author. The money from the book goes towards a cult. Author X is evil.

I would do a display for Banned Books month on a 4ft by 8ft table of books that were requested to be banned in my store alone. My highest total was 243 different titles in one year.

People would go through the store and destroy the books when I wouldn't remove them. My security system allowed me to identify those who went to these extremes and ban the people from every bookstore in the chain.

I did see where controversy sparked interest in the title but this was generally short lived, maybe a couple of weeks before interest waned.

 

[hitmouse]

There can't be that many banned books these days, can there? The last book i remember being banned was Salmon Rushdie's Satanic Verses and even then, it was in Muslim countries.

The free publicity that Rushdie received as a result of the banning certainly helped sales, but it didn't interest me.

Satanic Verses was also banned in India, which is a secular republic.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

When books were totally physical, a type of book banning could be done by school boards deciding which they books will be bought and which ones won't be bought. This can be done for any reason from practicality to personal whims. While it only appears to be a local consideration, this is not the case. The biggest accounts with the scholastic book companies can sometimes determine which books a book company will stock. The books not stocked are not available to buy regardless of whether a school district wants to buy it or not. This can effectively control what gets taught as history. E-books probably put a dent in this practice, but not all schools use e-books.

 

[tobl]

Satanic Verses was also banned in India, which is a secular republic.

yes but maybe half the country is muslim

 

[hitmouse]

yes but maybe half the country is muslim

14% of the population are muslim. So, reasonable to say it is a country with a lot of muslims ( and no doubt it was trying to protect local sensibilities) but that is not the same as saying it is a muslim country, because constitutionally it is secular.

just looked this up: the book was also banned in Venezuela, Singapore, Thailand, and by apartheid-era South Africa. So, we can say that the book was banned in a number of muslim and non- muslim countries.

 

[Astro Pen]

Controversial books will be banned by omission. They will never get printed in the first place. Publishing houses will make that collective decision before books ever see a press.
You may say, "You can self publish though." A few seconds thought about who controls the 'self' publishing presses will burst that bubble. Account closed.
Maybe scattering thumb drive PDFs around liberally? At least until the authorities find that secret 486 in your basement. But make sure your recipients don't open the file on an internet connected machine.
So banned books will soon be a thing of the past, but not in the way you hoped.

Hmm, I'm getting an idea for a novel......

 

[BAYLOR]

Controversial books will be banned by omission. They will never get printed in the first place. Publishing houses will make that collective decision before books ever see a press.
You may say, "You can self publish though." A few seconds thought about who controls the 'self' publishing presses will burst that bubble. Account closed.
Maybe scattering thumb drive PDFs around liberally? At least until the authorities find that secret 486 in your basement. But make sure your recipients don't open the file on an internet connected machine.
So banned books will soon be a thing of the past, but not in the way you hoped.

Hmm, I'm getting an idea for a novel......

Sounds like a plan . Go for it.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I was listening to a radio programme about Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse . Which, in its day, shocked France. It was written by a 19 year old and the spoiled brat heroine smokes and has premarital sex with someone she doesn't love just because she likes sex, and she manipulates her husband's lover into committing suicide. (This was at a time when female emancipation was a pipe dream in Simone de Beauvoir head - married French women needed their husband's written permission to get a job.) In the programme Caroline Loeb, an actress who does a one woman show on the life of Sagan, says she has women come up to her and tell her that when they were at school at the time the book was first published the nuns forbade them from reading it. So of course they all went out and bought copies.

 

[Rodders]

I'm curious to know whether anyone here ever read a book just because it was banned?

 

[tobl]

I'm curious to know whether anyone here ever read a book just because it was banned?

yes. satanic verses by salmam rushdie. honestly one of the worst things i've ever read

 

[Tanith]

It's hard to say. My library at this time has a book in its collection that's causing some controversy. Secret Pizza Party by Adam Rubin is a children's book about a raccoon who only wants some pizza, but of course gets chased off. He decides to hold a "secret pizza party" for himself. Another similarly-themed book by this author is Dragons Love Tacos.

A surprising number of people have issues with the pizza party book, though. I thought the complaint we got was from a crank, but both Amazon and Goodreads are full of reviews that point out that encouraging grade schoolers to have "secret parties" is dishonest at best and rather creepy at worst. I'm now curious enough to want to read it myself...however, at the moment it's been temporarily removed from the collection and given to management to review.

And now, having typed all that out, I'm hungry.

 

[tobl]

It's hard to say. My library at this time has a book in its collection that's causing some controversy. Secret Pizza Party by Adam Rubin is a children's book about a raccoon who only wants some pizza, but of course gets chased off. He decides to hold a "secret pizza party" for himself. Another similarly-themed book by this author is Dragons Love Tacos.

A surprising number of people have issues with the pizza party book, though. I thought the complaint we got was from a crank, but both Amazon and Goodreads are full of reviews that point out that encouraging grade schoolers to have "secret parties" is dishonest at best and rather creepy at worst. I'm now curious enough to want to read it myself...however, at the moment it's been temporarily removed from the collection and given to management to review.

And now, having typed all that out, I'm hungry.

i'm sorry, some wrote a book about a racoon wanting pizza and having secret partie to eat one and that's a problem?! why? is he having sex with the pizza?isn't there some book i think from seuss green egg and ham? they're gona bane that too?should i hide my mother recipe books too ? did covid scramble the brains of this people... oh sorry someone might bane that word too since it can refer to scrambled eggs. good grief

 

[Extollager]

Did I miss something, or has "banned" not been defined?

The idea seems to be that a book is prohibited, that is, some agency prohibits an existing book from being available to and read by some people. But could someone clarify that?

Otherwise this topic will be like others I have seen here at Chrons where there is a lot of discussion, some of it good and some of it not, but not much light is shed.

 

[Tanith]

Sorry, I should have clarified. The pizza party book I mentioned in my post is not banned, at least not yet. It's being "challenged", as they say. It simply came to mind because I learned of this tempest-in-a-pizza-box yesterday, and I happened to notice this thread.

In fact, I did a little more googling since my last post and learned that at least some of the concern over the book seems to be originating from that segment of the population I refer to as "Tinfoil Nation". I now wonder if this would be going on if the subject of the book were a hamburger-loving raccoon instead.

 

[Ray Zdybrow]

It does depend on the book and the people reading it. The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs was originally banned. People did read it, but not by the millions. Over time it got read. Back then the number of copies printed controlled how many people read it. Even today people are undecided if it is a masterpiece or an illegible piece of trash. With the internet a simple synopsis can easily broadcast an idea without the book ever being seen.

A synopsis of Naked Lunch, though?