It’s been a while. Life has been hectic and I’ve gotten away from tracking my progress — mostly because I’ve had to focus on so many other things that my goals for the year have fallen by the wayside. But I couldn’t go without posting about Banned Books Week!
Today kicks off Banned Books Week for 2025. To celebrate the week, I always like to browse the list of top banned and challenged books from the year before, and read one or more of them if I can.
As usual, the list of the top challenged books for last year includes quite a few repeats. And as usual, the list betrays the homophobia/transphobia, racism, and sexism that runs rampant in our culture.
- All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson
- Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (TIE)
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (TIE)
- Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
- Looking for Alaska by John Green (TIE)
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (TIE)
- Crank by Ellen Hopkins (TIE)
- Sold by Patricia McCormick (TIE)
- Flamer by Mike Curato
In fact, I’ve now read all of the usual suspects except for the first two, possibly the first three. All three are now on my TBR list.
I’ve been celebrating Banned Books Week in this manner for almost 20 years, but never has it seemed as important as it seems this year. With the year’s events — the threats to our Constitution, particularly to our First Amendment rights — I feel like our rights to read and write what we want is quickly becoming ever more precious.
So I will definitely be reading the remaining three books on the list in the coming weeks.
Never forget how lucky we are, for the past 250 years, to have been able to read what we want. Nazis burned books to try to destroy their influence. Don’t let history repeat itself.