Book Bingo: Censorship
Here are some suggestions for your 2025 Book Bingo NW category: Censorship. Book Bingo is our annual adult summer reading program presented in partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures and King County Library System.
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The Memory Police
Fiction. An Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance finds a young novelist hiding her editor from mysterious authorities who would erase all memories of people who once existed. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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The Secrets We Kept
Fiction. Prescott’s triumphant debut offers a fresh perspective on women employed by the CIA during the 1950s and their role in disseminating into the Soviet Union copies of Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak’s banned masterpiece. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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Burning the Books
Nonfiction. Libraries preserve the knowledge and ideas on which rights depend; no wonder they are so often attacked. Richard Ovenden tells the history of this deliberate destruction of knowledge—from library burnings to digital attacks and contemporary underfunding—and makes a passionate plea for the importance of these threatened institutions. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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The Right to Learn
Nonfiction. For this enlightening essay collection, political scientist Johnson (Black Power in the Suburbs), film studies scholar Ruth (It’s Not Free Speech), and historian Schrecker (The Lost Promise) bring together educators and activists to respond to recent right-wing attempts to ban teaching material pertaining to race, gender identity, and sexuality. (Publishers Weekly)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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The Indispensable Right
Nonfiction. Placing the current attacks on free speech in their proper historical, legal and political context, this timely, eye-opening book shows how the alliance of academic, media and corporate interests with the government's traditional wish to control speech is hurtling us toward censorship. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: Available
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You Can't Say That!
Teen Nonfiction. Sharing candid interviews with 13 top children's and young adult authors who discuss why their books have faced censorship, a historian and critic puts First Amendment challenges into historical context and examines the support network that protects and defends young people's rights. (NoveList)
Format: Book
Availability: All copies in use
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