–Read-a-thon or Read-a-5K?

Started my Readathon off right! Coffee and savoring a pore through the Sunday NY Times

I’m SO excited about the Dewey’s Read-a-thon on Saturday, Oct 13, starting at 12:00 pm GMT, which is 8:00  am EST in the US. Hundreds of people around the world will devote a whole day just to reading! If you are interested in joining, sign up here! Or you can sign up to be a Read-a-thon Cheerleader. Yes, it’s a sport and we have cheerleaders.

Make no mistake—these folks are not fooling around. They prepare meals in advance so they won’t have to take time off for cooking, and they stock up on caffeine to fuel them for 24 hours. Full disclosure: there are some people (like moi) who will take breaks and actually stop to sleep. But there are an impressive number of readers who go the distance. And they go through a crazy amount of books!

My Read-a-thon stack. JK!

I know because they post (via blogs and Twitter) pictures of the aforementioned swollen—towering—stacks of books. Check it out via #Dewey or #Readathon hashtags. Most impressive, and er, intimidating. Alas, I will be a teense of a Read-a-Thon slacker—hence my not-quite-a-stack, pictured right. It’s not by choice, but I have to work for several hours tomorrow. Also, I’ve had a trying couple of months in which I’ve only managed to sneak reading in hurried bursts on the subway, over lunch, or staying up late. It’s been so rushed, and, honestly, I’m just not in peak perusatory form.  (E.g., I’m pretty sure that’s not a word.)

But I want to join in spirit. So I am approaching the Read-a-Thon as an exercise in savoring the read, the peruse, the pore. I will take it slow and enjoy. On deck: one of my favorite poets—Edward Thomas, at times called the ‘British Robert Frost‘ (apologies to the Brits who would say Frost was the ‘American Thomas’). I’ll linger over his poems, like Adlestrop, October, and The Sun Used to Shine (about him and Frost).

Beyond that, I’m going to wing it from my embarrassingly-tall and not-shrinking-fast-enough TBR. Also, I am definitely going to allow myself a leisured, every-section read of the Sunday New York Times, which I haven’t had the luxury of enjoying in months. So instead of a marathon, for me, it will be like a fun run. A reading 5K, if you will. You don’t really need to train. You can just cruise along and enjoy the ride—or read.

Here We Go, Dewey’s Read-a-thon April 2013

Dewey’s 24-Hour Read-a-Thon

Sign Up to Read

Read-a-thon Start Times

A Tribute to Dewey

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–Happy 30th Anniversary to Banned Books Week!

It’s Banned Books Week (Sept 30- Oct 6), organized each year by the American Library Association (ALA). The awareness campaign was founded in 1982—the same year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a New York school district could not remove Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five from its middle-school and high-school libraries. Well, barely. The court was sharply divided over this decision, split 4-4 as to whether limiting the books would violate the students’ First Amendment rights. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger actually sided with the book banners. The swing vote was cast by Justice Byron White, who concurred with the four that wanted to limit the school board’s ability to withhold books, but he refused to comment on the First Amendment issue. Er, I’m no lawyer, but denying books to students seems a pretty clear violation of both “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press.”

It was close call, but that ruling hasn’t stopped Slaughterhouse Five from being barred repeatedly from school bookstores and libraries, as recently as 2007 in Howell, Michigan. Other frequently banned classics include high-school favorites like A Separate Peace, by John Knowles; As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner; The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger; The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding; and just about everything written by Hemingway, Orwell, and Steinbeck. Check out the ALA’s list of the Most Frequently Banned and Challenged Classics.

Back in 1918 when James Joyce’s Ullysses came out it was banned from publication in the U.S., Ireland, Canada, and England. Sylvia Beach famously came to the rescue by printing and selling the book from her Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. In 1940, U.S. Post Office actually declared Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls “non-mailable.”

But censorship is not something of the past. Right after the first The Lord of the Rings movie debuted in 2001, a pile of Tolkien’s books were burned outside a church in Almagordo, New Mexico, for being “satanic.” Clearly, these people had not actually read the books (or seen the movie). In 2010, a California school district banned Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary owing to “explicit definitions.”

Last year, the ALA reports there were 326 attempts to remove books from school curricula and/or libraries. The Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2011 include To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (both repeatedly challenged in the 21^st century). Of course, the list includes The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, just as a few years back the target was on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. I confess, I feel a bit squeamish about younger children reading The Hunger Games, but that’s a decision for their parents—not the state … or the local town council, seriously?

So celebrate our right to read this week by reading a banned book … or any book. Check your local library for Banned Book Week events. Also, don’t miss the Virtual Read-Out on YouTube. Passages from banned books will be read in video clips by celebrities, famous authors, and just about anyone who wants to upload to the channel. Read on.

30 Year Timeline of Banned Books Week

Top Ten Banned Books of 2011

List of Most Frequently Challenged Classic Books

Banned and Challenge Classics: History by Book

BBW Virtual Read-Out on You Tube

Bookman’s Does Banned Books on You Tube

Flashback Post: Banned Books Week 2011—Celebrate  Celebrate our Right to Read

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