Sunday, October 4, 2009

Sunday Salon... Banned Books Week finishes up with a Thank You and a Special Giveaway!

The Banned Book Giveaway has Ended! CONGRATS! To Stpand who won! He Chose Catcher in The Rye! Thanks to EVERYone for joining in on the fun! And for participating in Banned Book Week!

What is the Sunday Salon? Imagine some university library's vast reading room. It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in. They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them, and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go. Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake...

Today wraps up Banned Books Week. A week to celebrate the freedom to read. It's been a wonderful week to share favorite books, discover new books and talk about the challenges that face authors whose words may offend some and inspire others...

During this week there has been chatter about how Banned Books Week is really a fallacy- that even if a book is banned somewhere such as your child's library, that you can still get the book elsewhere. So that really books aren't banned in the sense that you CAN'T get them, so why Banned Books Week?

Banned Books Week to me is the celebration of the freedom to read & the freedom of expression. Yes, in the truest sense of the word, banned may not be accurate in the U.S. because even if the book is banned somewhere, you should be able to purchase the book elsewhere. But it's the threat to our freedoms, the threat to our talented writers who may feel inhibited in their writing that makes this one week important, a week to examine the books that are challenged & banned and the reasons behind the controversies. If readers never said a word and let every book that someone didn't approve of be removed from the shelves, how many books would be left?

So Thank You to everyone who shared their thoughts, books and links to their blogs in order for us all to appreciate the written word! I know I discovered new books to read! And of course I spent the week with Holden Caulfield... I'll catch you up later with that...

In the meantime... as a special thank you for everyone who followed along here with Banned Books Week, and Chick with Books readers, I'm going to giveaway one paperback copy of ANY of the "Banned Books" I talked about this week for banned book week! So, starting with last weeks Sunday Salon which highlighted 3 banned books, just leave a comment letting me know which banned or challenged book you'd like to read , and leave me your email address too! The giveaway is open to EVERYone (as long as I can mail a book to you!) and that means INTERNATIONAL! The giveaway will end next Sunday October 11th at 11:59 Pm!

Next sunday, Sunday Salon will be back with some great recommendations and books that caught my eye! Monday Memoirs will be taken over by 2 great books that are being highlighted all over the reading blogosphere for that one day. (Memoir Monday will be back the following monday!). October is National Reading Group Month and we'll be talking about that next week, and recommending some great book club reads. So, stop by next week and in the meantime, enter the giveaway for a banned book! Leave me a comment below!

Happy Reading... Suzanne

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