Turns out that I actually did have one.
Here's the story.
Way back in 1999, some months into the publication of the original edition of The Best Things in Life Are Free, I received a photocopy of a book review that the Florida publisher sent to my attention. The review was not glowing. In fact, it was downright mean.
Turns out it was a review that the publisher had picked up from a church newsletter, wherein the church librarian had reviewed my book and closed with the comment: "This one won't be making its way to the shelves here." Evidently this particular church librarian found something in the book that rankled her feathers and she was taking a stand against books that only mentioned Jesus twice in 250 pages. She was not going to allow other eyes to see it.
Well, so my book was necessarily banned. Just dismissed.
But I did get a kick out of being on one person's banned list and then made it a point to go out to the library that week and buy a few banned books. Anything that is banned is bound to be a better read that a book that can slip through the wide cracks of the Freedom of the Press. Thank God there are people out there watching out for the rest of us, saving us from reading bad books.
But I must be doing something wrong. I haven't written a banned book since.
I thought surely, by now, I would have written something that someone--other than my wife--would want to burn.
1 comment:
Mine was banned, too. A well known bookstore not far away as the streets go in my town refused to put it on the shelf because it was not religious enough---the not quoting Scripture enough thing. Religion isn't religious unless it quotes from Genesis to Revelations. How our God carried us through our ordeal and taught us how we fit into the great scheme of things, His, "sorry, can't put it on our shelves." Once a lady transferred her membership from my church, too, for the same reason.
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