Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Downtown Bookstore

Book People is the largest independent book store in Texas. And it located downtown (Sixth and Lamar) and when we move downtown we will be able to walk there. On Sunday we visited them as we've loved to do for many years. Besides books they stock gifts, "Keep Austin Weird" items and have a great news stand and a coffee shop. They had this display of banned books on offer Sunday. One of the banned books that we were formerly not allowed to read or buy was Ulysses which I happen to be reading now. (Or so I claim...I seem to be mostly reading newspapers these days.) You can click on the picture for more details of the store display and books.

2 comments:

  1. In a land that seems to keep promoting freedom & free speech, it seems a bit strange that novels are still being banned. Joyce's Ulysses?? That books at least 70 years old!

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  2. Well, of course, you can buy Joyce's tome these days quite freely here in the 'land of the free' but all of the books in the display were banned or restricted somehow at some point. I should point out that when Sylvia Beach published the book in Paris in the Twenties it was banned in both the "land that seems to keep promoting freedom and free speech" and the country that had reluctantly granted our "freedom" in the 18th century! Joyce's work is so dense that you wouldn't think the censors would make it to the more shocking bits! Also on the display (visible if you enlarge) is "Brokeback Mountain" which was published (as a short story) in The New Yorker and I'm sure was banned in schools or something. Thanks for reading! This post and books, too.

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