It's been a nice, easy week of reading.  Last week I mentioned that I was going "off plan" for the week, and would read where my mood takes me.  So, I finished three short novels.  Two were by British author Barbara Pym, who I really enjoy.  I read Quartet in Autumn (read my review) and Jane and Prudence (my review).  The first book was the better of the two, but both demonstrated Pym's ability to simultaneously celebrate and poke fun at her own culture.  After that i was ready for something "less British," and I was feeling a wee bit guilty about some of the books that had been languishing on my TBR pile for a while.  Being an analytical sort, I perused my LibraryThing library, filtering on those tagged "tbr," and "own" (that means it's on my shelves somewhere).  Sorting by date added to my library, I chose the book that had been patiently sitting there for the longest period of time:  Sebastian Faulk's The Girl at the Lion d'Or.

Now, I really like Sebastian Faulks.  I thought his novel Birdsong was amazing, and Charlotte Gray was pretty good.  These two novels are the "bookends" of a trilogy, with  The Girl at the Lion d'Or in the middle.  However, it was written much earlier in Faulks' career, and it shows.  You can read my review if you're interested ... but in short, I would not recommend it.

So now we come to the title of my post.  Banned Books Week began yesterday, and runs through Saturday, October 4.  This is an opportunity to recognize those books which have been banned, challenged, or censored, celebrate their survival in the canon of literature, and rejoice our ability to read these works today.  I'm celebrating my "freedom to read" with Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness.  Published in 1928, it was banned for 20 years due to its "obscenity":  the book deals openly with lesbian relationships and argues passionately that homosexuality is innate, not a choice.  This topic still divides our society today, and so many are silenced and denied other freedoms that I take for granted.  While we've come a long way since 1928 -- and even during my own lifetime -- I do hope we can accelerate our progress towards inclusion and equality for all people.

Would you like to join the celebration of  Banned Books Week? I've come across a few other bloggers who have already posted their thoughts on the week ahead:

• Jenn at Devourer of Books has been part of creating LibraryThing's Banned Books Library, which as of this writing contains nearly 700 books that were and are banned, challenged, or censored around the world.  This is an amazing resource if you're looking for something to read this week!
• Rebecca at The Book Lady's Blog is celebrating re-reads and reviews of favorite banned books and/or authors.
• "Unfinished Person" at Just a Reading Fool at  has taken on a personal challenge to read a banned or challenged book a day for the next eight days.

These are just a few.  Are you doing anything to celebrate your freedom to read?  Leave a comment here!

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