Right to Read

As a community bookstore, we support everyone's right to read--and write--what they like. As a rule, we don't monitor the content of the books we carry. We do offer reviews, our own and others, to inform potential readers and let parents know what to expect.

E.M. Forster, author of A Room with a View, said: "We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship."

If you wonder if Forster is right, compare these lists:

Seven authors whose books were burned in Germany in 1933. Heinrich Heine's line from an 1821 play is engraved at the site, "Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people."

Seven of the top 25 most-challenged books/series from 2000 to 2009,
as compiled by the American Library Association.

Controversies about politics, sex and religion will continue to break up dinner table conversations and provoke calls to censor free speech and curtail civil liberties. But at Read (Think) Books, we stand by your right to decide what to read and what to think about it.

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It's Banned Books Week starting this Sunday, September 30th. Check out this page from the ALA: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek.