It’s Buy a Friend a Book Week! This week is one of the four per year weeks where bookish types around the globe target a friend and plot which book to buy for them. bwahahaha! (that’s my October/Halloween laugh.) You can click on over and see what all the hub-bub is about (even on Twitter) and slap some BAFAB week icons on your site. But most importantly… pick someone… and buy them a book.

This week is also Banned Book Week as organzied by the American Library Association. Lots of libraries having events this week and the ALA has gone all social media with their Facebook and MySpace pages.

But WOW let me tell you how shocked I was at some titles included on page Amazon coughed up listing all the books that have been “banned or challenged in 2008”. Now, not having The Joy of Sex in a high school library, I get. And thinking that middle school library goers shouldn’t be digesting Sebold’s Lovely Bones, I grant you.

But banning Huck Finn? The Giver? Of Mice and Men? from high school or community libraries? For real? I’ve seen Hardee’s commercials that violate more social mores, in 18 seconds, than all three of those classics combined. Oh well. That’s reason enough to read a banned book (or explore one on Google’s Banned Books page)!