Freedom to Read Week event round-up

Much of the debate preceding this year’s national Freedom to Read Week (Feb. 20-26) has focused on Alabama publisher NewSouth Books’ edited version of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. No doubt this sensitive topic will be raised again at the Book and Periodical Council’s free event, “Challenging Books: Who Should Decide What Our Children Read?” on Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel. (To get primed, read George Elliott Clarke’s take, “N-Word Wickedness,” from NOW Magazine).

Freedom of sexual expression also generates plenty of public discussion. Here are a few national FTRW events that peer between the sheets:

• Censoring Manga for Fun and Profit (Feb. 23, Toronto Public Library, Lillian H. Smith Branch)
• Sexual Outliers: Censorship, Advocacy Journalism and the Gay Press (Feb. 23, Toronto Public Library, Yorkville Branch)
• Freedom to Read … Out Loud: Risky and Risqué Stories for Adults (Feb. 24, The ARTery, Edmonton)
• Banned Books: Madame Bovary (Feb. 28, Toronto Public Library, Deer Park Branch)

For a complete list of national events, visit freedomtoread.ca.

Pentagon celebrates Banned Books Week by destroying spy memoir

Just in time for Banned Books Week comes news that the Pentagon has overseen the destruction of a book deemed to contain classified information about the war in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that the Department of Defense was attempting to buy the entire 9,500-copy first print run of Operation Dark Heart by former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Lt. Colonel Anthony Shaffer. The Pentagon and publisher St. Martin’s Press have since come to an agreement to publish a redacted version of the controversial memoir.

AFP reports:

With Pentagon representatives looking on, St. Martin’s Press pulped the first print run of Operation Dark Heart a week ago and has released a revised version in a deal with the U.S. government.

“There were approximately 9,500 copies of the book that contained classified information that the department entered into an agreement with the publisher to destroy,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters.

“The publisher conducted that destruction a week ago on Monday the 20th, with DoD (Department of Defense) observers there to witness it.”

Elsewhere, it has been reported that the DoD, which originally approved the manuscript, has reimbursed the publisher to the tune of $47,000 (U.S). As for the supposedly dangerous secrets contained in the book, they still might see the light of day: apparently, an unknown number of electronic versions of the uncensored first edition have already been sent to reviewers.

Bookmarks: Four magazines die, a classic threatened (again), and the two-timing ways of Archie Andrews

Bookish links from around the Web:

• The foodie bride’s lament: Condé Nast-owned magazines Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride, and Modern Bride all cease publication
• More book banning madness: Toronto parent wants Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird off the Toronto District School Board’s curriculum
• Speaking of writers from the American South, Reuters assures us that Maya Angelou is not dead
• Big Love, Riverdale style: Archie Andrews is set to propose to Betty after wedding her snooty rival, Veronica
• Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero could be adapted for the stage
• Your daily laugh, courtesy of McSweeney’s: introducing the Kindle Gutenberg Bookreader

Banned books

It’s the American Library Association‘s Banned Books Week, and their website features lists of frequently challenged books covering various eras on their website. Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale is 37th on the ALA’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the 1990s.

In honour of Banned Books Week, the Guardian asks whether or not you’ve been exercising your freedom to read, with a quiz about censored books past and present. Here’s one to ponder:

Who was the ALA’s most frequently “challenged” author of 2007?

1. Mark Twain
2. Richard Dawkins
3. Maya Angelou
4. Robert Cormier

Here is a look at some books that have been challenged in Canada, and some of the reasons why. The list includes a number of Canadian authors, including Deborah Ellis, Alice Munro, and Mordecai Richler. And, going local, the Fahrenheit 451 blog for the Pelham Public Library in Fonthill, ON, discusses censorship issues and provides lists of books that have been banned at the library challenged in various locations, including schools and libraries, over the past few years.

U.K. exports censorious libel laws

Just in time for Banned Books Week, which runs until Oct. 6, The New York Times reports how a loophole in English law, combined with the globalized booktrade, may have a deleterious effect on freedom of speech outside of U.K. borders.

At the centre of the controversy is Saudi banker and businessman Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz, who wrangled an apology and undisclosed damages from Cambridge University Press for publishing Alms for Jihad, which alleges that bin Mahfouz is an Al Qaeda financier. Bin Mahfouz also recently won damages from U.K. publisher Pluto Press, U.S. author Rachel Ehrenfeld, and the newspaper The Mail on Sunday for making similar allegations.

The concern is that stringent libel laws in the U.K., where the burden of proof falls on the defendant, will affect foreign publishers, since, as the article points out, English libel law technically applies not just to U.K. titles, but to all books on sale in the U.K.:

Today, any book bought online in England, even one published exclusively in another country, can ostensibly be subject to English libel law. As a result, publishers and booksellers are increasingly concerned about “libel tourism”: foreigners suing other foreigners in England or elsewhere, and using those judgments to intimidate authors in other countries…

Incidently, the article points out that one of the original “libel tourists” may be Roman Polanski, who in 2005 used the English courts to sue Vanity Fair, which published allegedly slanderous comments by former Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham.

Bookmarks – Naomi Klein loved/hated by the National Post, Vincent Lam’s first draft crap, and more

Some book-related links:

• The National Post paid for excerpts from Naomi Klein’s book, then slammed her in its editorial pages – um, isn’t this usually called “editorial independence”? (The New York Times)
• Vincent Lam on bridging the doctor/writer divide and his “crap” first drafts (Entertainment Weekly)
• James Wood’s first New Yorker review – of the new Roth, Russo, Sebold, translation of the Book of Psalms! (New Yorker)
• The most-banned books of the year (Los Angeles Times)
• A guide to Philip Roth (Sunday Times)