A quick check here in the States showed all of them available on Amazon for under $25 each.
US book banning is mainly schools and parent groups strong arming libraries and educators to forgo specific books.
In the name of literacy, we need to use words properly.
Is a specific institution or library are banned by their decision makers to have a book - that book is banned in that context. If you don't buy this that fair, but don't come at me with your pedantry when I just answered your question.
By that reasoning, all PG-13 and R rated movies are "banned" just because your elementary school library doesn't carry them. Absurd, huh?
"10000s of people" can create new definitions of words as they choose, just don't be surprised when educated people think they're fools.
Are there examples of these?
The few examples mentioned in the article are easy to buy, at least in the US. Is there a full manifest somewhere?
https://www.service95.com/manifesto-library-launch looking here, it seems the best case would be Navalny, although he wasn't really killed for his book per se, but rather his political opposition.
- Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale)
- Books that seem relatively anodyne, and it's not clear why they were banned. (eg: the perks of being a wallflower)
- Books that governments might have feared in the old days, but are now much less threatening than other more readily-available material. (eg: 1984)
I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information. Instead, modern book-banning feels much more symbolic. ie, "we do not approve of this book!" rather than effective. Anyone can buy the book on Amazon, or pirate it for free, or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas. And importantly, find many, many more extreme, subvesrive, rebellious, etc. ideas for free online.
Of course I do not support the banning of the books, but I think sometimes once a book is banned this act gives the book power -- in more senses than one. Less discussed is that the fans of the book often believe it to be better than it actually is, merely for being banned.
Handmaid's Tale is actually a pretty decently written book for a dystopia. You just need to like dystopias.
The museum is in Portugal. It is not specified where those books are banned.
People on this site have some really bizarre ideas about what constitutes "clickbait".
Here in Poland we had "Mein Kampf" by certain Austrian painter in my primary school library for example.
It's a brick! And poorly written at that. The man had no talent for the arts.
According to that list, in Germany unannotated editions of Mein Kampf are still banned.
People who are canceled are not literally thrown in prison and executed.
A more accurate term might be "politically unfavorable", but that doesn't get people riled up. And, I'm just going to take a wild guess here, but this library is probably zeroing in on books that are politically unfavorable to conservative governments. I doubt we'll find the likes of Mein Kampf in there.
It is not clear to me from the reporting if Manifesto Library is a translation error or if it really is a library within a bookshop.
I suspect it's neither and more like an art installation.
Two of my favorite examples of grammatical importance:
Seriously though, good on her.
I feel like if they'd still let the person read the book by themselves, and freely share it with others, then indeed it's merely a curation choice. But, if I'd expect, they try to prevent this person from reading their own brought book or sharing it with others, then I think it's fair to say that book been banned and/or censored, at least in that particular location.
[1] https://pen.org/book-bans/book-bans-frequently-asked-questio...
> "any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished."
Though this is a fascinating definition.. anytime, anywhere says "no thanks" to carrying a book outside of purely budgetary or physical space limits, it is now a "ban".
The more fascinating question would be discovering the boundary of what PEN, et al consider a "good ban" because I bet we could come up with a few.
That's not what the definition you just quoted says. In fact, the definition you quoted is very close to the common definition of "ban": a refusal to allow something, usually by an official entity.
“We aren’t including this book in the library because we don’t have space for every book.” <—— not censorship
“We aren’t including this book because we don’t think it’s appropriate for kids to learn about trans people.” <—- censorship
When people ban books because they don't want others to learn about trans people, they're usually pretty vocal about their motivations.
Isn't this basic curation and child protection, not censorship?
The term “banned books” has become a pop culture meme. In this context it doesn’t literally mean banned, it means the book wasn’t allowed somewhere. In extreme cases a government in a controlling country may have forbidden the book.
However in a lot of cases the “banned books” were just not allowed in some school’s library for kids somewhere.
That’s why all of the books aren’t actually banned in the US and are readily available, unless maybe you’re a 3rd grader looking for them at some school library that probably wasn’t going to order the book for kids anyway before it became “banned”
and what is a good word to use when something isn't allowed somewhere? perhaps... "banned"?
i dont understand why people think something needs be unavailable globally to be considered "banned".
there's a million examples of the word "banned" being used when X isn't allowed in Y context. people only get touchy about it when it comes to books for some reason.
dang bans people from HN, no one gets upset about the use of the word "ban" there, despite it being a context-specific ban.
We don’t call R-rated movies “banned” because we’ve decided not to show it at schools to kids. That’s why it’s confusing when we switch to books and the word “banned” means somebody, somewhere, decided it wasn’t appropriate for kids in their school or something like that.
dang bans someone from HN? no confusion. alcohol banned in public? no confusion. weapons banned from schools? no confusion.
books? oh my god, they aren't banned they just aren't allowed
Notice how all of those bans include a specific context? From HN, in schools, in public.
No confusion.
Notice how the only context in the headline is “in Portugal” but the books are not banned in Portugal?
Confusion.
It’s really not hard.
reading just the headline then feigning confusion is weird.
the word "banned", specifically and only in the context of books, is one of the fucking strangest quirks of HN.
Further, when people talk about banned books, they usually mean at some sub-country level, even down to a school board. Like if you look at -
https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/
- these books weren't banned from the United States, but they're controversial enough that individual school boards or library systems removed them.
Weird example. The Handmaid's Tale is quite good.
The book and show have little in common, and holy hell the show got up its own ass more often than not.
The Handmaid's Tale wasn't about Islam but about religious fundamentalism and, by Atwood's own words, an extrapolation of trends she saw in the US.
It's a good book, it seems contentious to list it as a "bad book" as a given, and expect people to agree with you. It's an acclaimed book and well received by other authors.
> Nothing really happens.
Bizarre take.
In structure it has a lot of parallels to 1984, the protagonist is trapped in an oppressive regime seemingly without escape, some authority figures are ambiguous, there's some hope but it can turn into a trap, and finally a sort of open end (both Winston's and Offred's fates are implied but unresolved, though Offred's is more ambiguous) and a an epilogue explaining the regime and its implied downfall.
Do you also find 1984 as a novel where nothing happens?
“I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information.”
You don’t think a school library can prevent access to information? Poor people exist.
I just don't think you can prevent access to information the same way, though. There will be at least one smart phone in the house. There will be friends and relatives with smartphones, with computers, etc.
A poor person who lacks the resources to query on youtube for videos or wikipedia for research will also not be able to sit through a full-length novel.
[edit]
In the 1960s it may yet have been true (despite radio and shortwave) that if your local libraries and shops did not contain a book -- if your friends had never heard of its ideas -- that you would truly remain ignorant of some of the subversive ideas out there. Things just do not work that way these days. Ideas spread faster and farther than ever. You really cannot prevent the spread of information the same way.
At best, you can create a culture of censorship around certain information, which is what I believe modern book-banning does. My quibble here is that people seem to treat book-banning as if it's 1890, and the ideas are being killed due to lack of spread. In the modern world, book banning is symbolic and helps to identify ideas as subversive and unwanted -- but they are NOT out of reach.
Again, I do not support book banning whatsoever.
I think though the library is supposed to be a general, worldwide collection of books that were censored/banned anywhere in the world, the physical location of the library just happens to be in Portugal. That's how I understood the article at least.
If they were banned in Portugal it would run afoul of the legal system, and probably be closed down, obviously.
But if the criteria of being in the library - that the book be banned somewhere in the world; that's a reason to visit the library in of itself.
Though I think there's going to be a lot of garbage, one need only remember that Life of Brian (the Monty Python movie) is banned in the Vatican. (along with a bunch more).
Sometimes just seeing what is banned and where is a sort of art in of itself.
I can find no confirmation of this, or of any ban since 1966 (and that is assuming that the index of forbidden books had legal force in the Vatican).
> But if the criteria of being in the library - that the book be banned somewhere in the world; that's a reason to visit the library in of itself.
Is it worth a visit to a physical location? A lot of those books are ones I could see on a list and order online. Its not really that interesting if a book as been banned somewhere very authoritarian, nor am I that interested if schools in one area somewhere were not allowed to have a book in their libraries. On the other hand reading down this list is very illuminating, and often astonishing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern... I am still scrolling down it, but Austria, Australia and China are all fascinating.
https://www.thewoodword.org/entertainment/2023/04/03/reeling...
suddenlybananas•1h ago
Guthwine•52m ago
Either way, I agree with your comment that there is nothing dangerous about Atwood unless you are a fan of authoritarian religious governments.
suddenlybananas•46m ago
buellerbueller•43m ago