I see a post listing off “Banned Books” almost every time I’m scrolling. Naturally, I was alarmed. Book Censorship? Book Banning? How could such a thing be happening in 2025, and I hadn’t heard about it until now? 

        But I can’t take anything at face value. It’s like some toxic personality flaw. And I started researching obsessively about these book bans. It became my special interest. (Seriously, I can see everyone around me getting annoyed with how often I bring it up.) I completely fell down the rabbit hole on this one. 

        I started by asking myself: If you walk into a bookstore and find these titles prominently displayed, how could they be banned? 

         And the answer is: These books aren’t actually banned. Some school districts in particularly religious communities just don’t have them available in their public school library.              

        They aren’t being taken out of circulation. They’re not being scrubbed from the internet. In fact, free pdf versions for the majority of them can be found online. Not to mention, most of these novels have film adaptations. If these books really were banned, wouldn’t the adaptations be censored as well? Why bother restricting access to the novel, when audiences can still just watch the movie?