Banned Books Week 2023
In just a few weeks, the Pretty Literate Community will start our week-long read-along for #BannedBooksWeek. This year we're featuring a banned classic with a message as relevant today as the day it was first published.
Why THIS Novel?
This year's classic has become known as one of the most significant rationalizations for freedom of speech and expression, according to Anna Tingley (Variety.com).
"The page-turning novel...invites readers into an imagined future...wherein the ruling Party keeps all citizens under the constant, watchful eye of Big Brother and persecutes, tortures or kills anyone that engages in individual thought."
While the novel we chose to spotlight this year for #BannedBooksWeek holds a place of honor as one of PBS's Great American Reads Top 100, "it also maintains its status as the most banned book of all time in America" because of its social and political themes (and brief sexual content), according to The Archive website.
In this novel, {the author} writes of an omnipresent government that sucks away individuality and life from its citizens. One of those citizens'... job is to alter articles to fit the liking of the party and to revere its leader... -kstatecollegian.com
The dystopian classic we invite you to read alongside us in the Pretty Literate Community during #BannedBooksWeek is one that is set in a fictionalized totalitarian state that persecuted individual thinking and was the novel that gave the world phrases such as Big Brother, Newspeak, and thought police. (DailyMail)
A dystopia presents the opposite of an ideal world. It presents the worst that could happen and it represents the author’s view on how things could evolve in the future.
And this is exactly what {this} novel is about. It comes with food for thought... And considering the latest political events that took place over the last couple of years in the world, it seems that {this author} nailed it from the beginning. The societies and world we are currently living in present some similarities with the novel... -historycentral.com
That dystopian novel is none other than George Orwell's 1949 classic, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Why Read Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell?
It's fascinating, engaging, eerily familiar, and eye-opening, for starters.
It's relevant & timely, reading as a modern-day treatise against unrestrained political power - even though it was published 74 years ago.
It is unapologetic and unafraid to take a stand against fake news - something we could sorely learn from in our current climate.
It's thoughtful, inviting the reader to pause and consider the status quo in their corner of the world.
But don't take my word for it. Here's what pretty literate people like YOU are saying -
"Let Freedom Read"
If any of the above resonated within you, I want to invite you to join us for Pretty Literate's Community-Wide Read-Along of George Orwell's classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, during #BannedBooksWeek (October 1-7, 2023).
I've put together a pretty perfect package for Banned Books Week this year, including a leatherette version of Orwell's controversial novel alongside a handful of bookish souvenirs that I could have pulled straight out of the novel.
Check out the Banned Book Box - or, better yet, order yours now and have the peace of mind that you're ready to participate in a few short weeks. They ship the week before #BannedBooksWeek, just in time to begin reading Orwell's most tendentious work at the beginning of October.
If you've never read Nineteen Eighty-Four, now is the time.
If you read Nineteen Eighty-Four years ago, now is the time for a reread.
Come Read With Us
Make sure to LIKE/FOLLOW Pretty Literate on your favorite social sites for all things #BannedBooks in preparation during September and for #BannedBooksWeek in October. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, & YouTube, so please stop by and say "hello!"