Dangerous Birds

Merry midweek, my magnificent Malverinos! Yes, it’s Alliteration Week in my brain and it’s Banned Books Week… everywhere. According to the American Library Association, grumpy curmudgeons have attempted to restrict our access to over 11,000 titles since 1982. And these knee-jerking jerks often object to the sweetest things, like kiddie wizards and Maya Angelou.

Banned Books Week

If you’re wondering if the land of the free really needs to devote a week to “the freedom to read,” please be sadly assured that our great nation is chock-full of feisty loons who want to restrict our access to books about gay penguins and bathing cowboys. If you want to say a hearty yah-boo-sucks to these would-be censors—and celebrate your right to read about homosexual avian hijinks—then check out these ten ways to take part in Banned Books Week.

And here’s an unlikely segue: much like the aforementioned heartless nutbars concerned conservatives, we are utterly, irrationally obsessed with standards. Yep, our blasted standards are still missing, and thus our bookshelves are still sans shelves. Several kind readers sent us emails suggesting places we might get hold of some suitably bracket-like items, but our carpenter eschews bog-standard standards and has his heart set on a particular kind (the brown kind, apparently), and so we continue to wait patiently for the arrival of all that is upright and dun-colored…