Other: Ban This Book...?

In honour of "Banned Book Week", I would like to provide two seperate links:

The American Library Association's 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990 - 2000, featuring such standards as Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New World, Harry Potter, Where's Waldo, and James and the Giant Peach;

and

Human Events' list of the ten "Most Harmful Books" of the past two hundred years, with ten honourable mentions, featuring Quoataions of Chairman Mao, The Communist Manifesto, The Feminine Mistique, Democracy and Education, Madness and Civilization, and On Liberty.

I do always find it interesting to see what people fear. I could say "hate", but mostly it's fear that drives people to try banning ideas (like Communism) or images (like the nudity in Maurice Sendak's Night Kitchen).

Now, we had a friend sleep over last night, and she hates spiders, and asked me to get rid of one. Thing is, you can hate them all you want, but banning them from the house isn't going to do much: this is the season for them, the wife and I like them being around (what with her being a gardener and all), and they can't read eviction notices worth a damn. And pretending spiders don't exist is just plain stupid when you've got webs on your porch light and a Boris that climbed the drain into your bathtub.

Learning about them makes sense to me - chasing them outside, even squishing them if you insist, but jumping on a chair, pointing and shreiking "Evil! EEEE-vil!" is a little much, don't you think?