Banned Books Week

This is your friendly reminder that we are now experiencing Banned Books Week 2011.  I'm actually only aware of this thanks to my Twitter feed, which tends toward the literary and the liberal.

bannedbooksweek.org crunched the numbers and came up with the 10 most challenged titles of 2010.  The list includes classics (Brave New World), new classics (The Hunger Games), and some books I've never heard of but which sound interesting and thought-provoking, from what I see on Amazon.

The list also includes the Twilight series, which, say what you will, I don't think Twilight should be banned.  (I don't think any book should be banned, but that's just me.)  Twilight, or chapters thereof, would be an excellent study for creative writing class or English mechanics class under the syllabus section "How Not to Write."  See? Everything's a lesson in waiting.

But the one most challenged book  that really dropped my jaw is Barbara Ehrenreich's best-seller, the eviscerating and haunting and enraging Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America.

Your weekend assignment, if you have not already read it and if you don't have to eat a small bag of Dorito's for lunch while pregnant, or if you don't have to do math every month just to make sure you can do laundry on a regular basis, is to read Nickel and Dimed.