[Libs-Or] Tuesday Topic: Intellectual freedom beach reads 2016!

[Ross Betzer]

*Welcome to Tuesday Topics, a monthly series covering topics with
intellectual freedom implications for libraries of all types. Each message
is prepared by a member of OLA's Intellectual Freedom Committee
<http://www.olaweb.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=159>
(IFC). Questions can be directed to the IFC member who sent the message or
to one of the IFC chairs.*


*Back to the beach! *

Can professional reading be page-turning? Yes. Here are six books to pack
in your beach bag which will make you gasp, sigh, chuckle, and hopefully
even think about the importance of intellectual freedoms.


   -

   The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet
   by Justin Peters (2016, nonfiction). Aaron Swartz was a brilliant
   wunderkind, an Internet entrepreneur, and a passionate voice for copyright
   reform. He also was indicted by the U.S. government for illegally
   downloading academic articles and subsequently committed suicide. This
   narrative nonfiction book tells the story of the historical events and
   figures (many of them quite colorful) which led to the U.S. copyright laws
   of today, and it raises questions about how these laws affect all of our
   intellectual lives.



   -

   The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya (2016, fiction). Maybe your
   summer reading tastes tend towards big Russian novels? Then you’re in luck!
   This beautifully translated epic is set in the Soviet Union and Russia from
   the death of Stalin (1953) to the mid 1990s, among a community of people to
   whom samizdat, underground literature, is the stuff of life. You can read
   about the author and this book in “The Big Green Tent and the Subversive
   Power of Books
   <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/big-green-tent-and-the-subversive-power-of-books/413137/>”
   by Leonid Bershidsky, from the December 2015 Atlantic magazine.



   -

   The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed
   America by David Hajdu (2008, nonfiction). Right now is the perfect time
   for you to read this fast-paced and fascinating account of the rise of
   comic books in the middle of the 20th century, and the rise of those who
   would censor them. Why do you need to read this right now? Because the
   Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene is currently hosting an exhibit of
   artwork from a publisher who stood up to the massive wave of comic book
   censorship that took place in the 1950s: EC Comics. “Aliens, Monsters,
   and Madmen: The Art of EC Comics <http://jsma.uoregon.edu/EC>” is on
   display until July 10, 2016.



   -

   Americus by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill (2011, graphic novel). This
   graphic novel takes you to the modern-day, fictional small town of
   Americus, where  a battle is raging over whether the community's children
   should be allowed to read the blockbuster fantasy series, “The Adventures
   of Apathea Ravenchilde.” Meanwhile, awkward teenager Neil Barton is just
   trying to muddle through high school.



   -

   The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books by Azar Nafisi
   (2014, nonfiction). Nafisi, author of the bestselling Reading Lolita in
   Tehran, reflects on the power of books and their relation to freedom,
   both in her native Iran and in the United States. She envisions a “Republic
   of Imagination” where there are “no borders and few restrictions, where the
   villains are conformity and orthodoxy and the only passports to entry are a
   free mind and a willingness to dream.” Sounds like a library to me!



   -

   Looking for Alaska by John Green (2005, young-adult fiction). According
   to the American Library Association, this was the most challenged book in
   U.S. libraries in 2015. And of course John Green has a fantastic video
   response <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69rd-7vEF3s> to this dubious
   honor.


You can find all these titles, along with last year's picks, on the OLA
Intellectual Freedom Committee’s Goodreads page
<https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/39800860-ola-intellectual-freedom?shelf=if-beach-reads>
.

Happy reading!

-Ross Betzer

*Information Services Librarian - Multnomah County Library*

*Member - Oregon Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee*
*rossbk at multcolib.org <rossbk at multcolib.org> | 503.988.5728*
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