A quick check here in the States showed all of them available on Amazon for under $25 each.
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.
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.
US book banning is mainly schools and parent groups strong arming libraries and educators to forgo specific books.
Because that’s the standard you’re using for ”censored in the US”.
In the name of literacy, we need to use words properly.
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.
the word "banned", specifically and only in the context of books, is one of the fucking strangest quirks of HN.
Banning books for example has a very different context than banning cocaine. Cocaine use in the United States is banned, Hustler magazine is not. I can swing by the store tomorrow and pick one up legally, I can't get cocaine legally.
Restricting Hustler from a school full of kids is not banning it. Thus the quirk.
If I don't allow Green Eggs and Ham in my house does it belong in a museam of banned books?
[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.
It matters a lot who does it.
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.
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.
“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
Isn't this basic curation and child protection, not censorship?
When people ban books because they don't want others to learn about trans people, they're usually pretty vocal about their motivations.
no, its not.
>Restricting Hustler from a school full of kids is not banning it.
only if you are making up your own definition of "ban".
by any dictionary definition, it is completely appropriate to say hustler is banned from the school.
What I haven’t seen mentioned in these discussions is where the mental association of “banned books” comes from.
In America, at least, the school curriculum spends a lot of time talking about dictators. It mentions, numerous times over many years of a child’s life, that something dictators often do is to ban books that could make people question them or that could make people support people the dictator doesn’t like, etc. In all such cases covered in the school curriculum, dictators’ “banned books” are not allowed to be sold in the country at all, and are often destroyed, sometimes even in mass burnings.
So, this is the psychological association people typically have with the phrase “banned books”.
The news articles over the past X years declaring something like “Government Y bans books!” seem to be leveraging this mental association to give people the emotional impression that Government Y is doing dictatorships things. I think this is why people get annoyed, since not allowing whatever books in the school library is not a dictator thing (okay dictators do it but it’s like drinking milk or being against animal cruelty, it’s not something that is primarily done by dictators).
So, when people say that not allowing a book in a school library is a type of ban, they are correct, but they ignore this association which most people have from school.
That’s how we got to Dua Lipa doing a promotional photo op holding up books that can be purchased on Amazon and delivered to your Kindle to read immediately. Attaching the “banned” word to a book turns the purchase into an act of rebellion and a reason to talk about it, and the marketers are not going to waste that opportunity.
That’s why the “banned books” category has been expanded so much to include not only books that governments or corporations have tried to suppress, but also books that some school board in Kansas decided shouldn’t be included in the elementary school library.
Unfortunately once a term becomes this overloaded it loses meaning. The original topics of government censorship and oppression get less attention because it’s drowned out by pop stars holding up Margaret Atwood books for photo ops and people buying books on Amazon as a form of slacktivism.
The book can still be printed, bought, and read. It’s not banned.
Sun Tzu did say "appear weak when you are strong".
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.
And barely a bookshop at that, more of a tourist attraction. You need tickets to enter, and the main selection of books are classics, mainly public domain iirc. They have more recent/interesting books but only as decoration (I asked to buy a Naomi Klein book, they refused to sell it). Most people are just there to take pictures because the stairs inspired Harry Potter.
So I think they are aware of the “false friends” words.
With that said, I don’t think it’s an actual library, more like, as you said, an art installation, an exhibition, a space for highlighting books.
I've been to lots of bookstores with sections or displays for famously banned books. I'm pretty sure my local Indigo (basically a Canadian Barnes & Noble) has one. If that's all this is then it doesn't sound especially newsworthy outside of the celebrity involvement and maybe the renown of this particular shop.
OTOH the article describes it as a "permanent" installation, which does sound a little different from what I'm picturing.
Considering the length of the line to get into that place, I'd wager you're correct.
I've actually really been a fan of her, and her music before I heard about her Service95 endeavour. So seeing that video led me to looking into her Service95 work, and yeah, I have to say, she's the real deal.
Two of my favorite examples of grammatical importance:
Seriously though, good on her.
Whether books by e.g. Jared Taylor are also "banned" in this manner in the UK is left wonderfully vague - the only way to find out is to be found possessing one, and then see if the government prosecutes you. You get chilling effects for free, and avoid the bad PR of a "banned books" list!
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867
[2] https://www.thelawpages.com/criminal-offence/Possessing-raci...
[3] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/R-v-Robe...
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.
Language is mutable and alive and ever-changing. That's just how it goes.
+Used to mean 'inspiring awe'
++Used to mean 'young child (gender neutral)'
+++Used to mean 'foolish' or 'ignorant'
For example, North Korea has banned most western books so my local Barnes and Nobles is pretty much a banned book store.
Here in Poland we had "Mein Kampf" by certain Austrian painter in my primary school library for example.
According to that list, in Germany unannotated editions of Mein Kampf are still banned.
It's a brick! And poorly written at that. The man had no talent for the arts.
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.
Either way, I agree with your comment that there is nothing dangerous about Atwood unless you are a fan of authoritarian religious governments.
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.
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".
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.
Handmaid's Tale is actually a pretty decently written book for a dystopia. You just need to like dystopias.
Weird example. The Handmaid's Tale is quite good.
Edit: wow, downvotes for stating a book is quite good. HN at its worst.
Edit 2: in fact it's so bizarre, also seeing other commenters here downvoted for saying Handmaid is a good book, that I struggled to see the reason for the ire. I'm not from the US, mind you, so it took me a while to add 2 and 2 and remember Atwood and Handmaid are in the current political climate of the US an anti-Trump stance. So that has to be the reason. Saying Handmaid is a good book implies you're anti-Trump and therefore invites downvotes. Wow.
The book and show have little in common, and holy hell the show got up its own ass more often than not.
“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.
Right, that's the problem
> but last century produced wittgenstein;
I don't think a philosopher who died 80 years ago is driving the change in how words are used in the last 20 years. It has more to do with the Internet and the cultural forces driving people to use hyperbole or make things up to make money in the attention market. This article wouldn't be on HN if it was just about Dua Lipa starting a bookstore, they added "banned" so it would catch peoples attention even if that's basically a lie.
> perfectly clear communication was always a polite fiction.
The comment I replied to is trying to argue that it's ok to call books "banned" even if they're not banned, because it's like the term "cancelled" which at one point meant someone whose content was actually cancelled but I guess they're suggesting it doesn't mean that anymore either.
I'm not arguing that words should have perfect meanings, that is obviously a strawman, but this article and comment thread are using words to mean the complete opposite of their common meaning.
> It was a thinly veiled world-building exercise on the subjection of women in Islam… then it ends. Nothing really happens.
The Handmaid's Tale wasn't about Islam but about religious Christian 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?
https://www.thewoodword.org/entertainment/2023/04/03/reeling...
1. Regime change doesn't happen instantaneously. The Francoist line of thinking was still pervasive after Franco died, and through the 70s there was a waxing and waning of censorship.
2. The book was still restricted in multiple states, the spirit of my comment still stands.
"Banned" feels like a slightly clumsy word to use to describe restrictions such as these.
"Atwood was also inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978–79 that saw a theocracy established that drastically reduced the rights of women and imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women, very much like that of Gilead." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale#Composit...
From Atwood herself (https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-...)
"The deep foundation of the United States—so went my thinking—was not the comparatively recent 18th-century Enlightenment structures of the Republic, with their talk of equality and their separation of Church and State, but the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th-century Puritan New England—with its marked bias against women—which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself."
https://www.patreon.com/DarvishIntelligence/posts/handmaids-...
From Atwood herself:
"The deep foundation of the United States—so went my thinking—was not the comparatively recent 18th-century Enlightenment structures of the Republic, with their talk of equality and their separation of Church and State, but the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th-century Puritan New England—with its marked bias against women—which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself.""
"Like the original theocracy, this one would select a few passages from the Bible to justify its actions, and it would lean heavily towards the Old Testament, not towards the New.
[...]
Surely the Gilead command would have moved to eliminate the Quakers, as their 17th-century Puritan forebears had done."
"I made a rule for myself: I would not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist. I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable behavior. The group-activated hangings, the tearing apart of human beings, the clothing specific to castes and classes, the forced childbearing and the appropriation of the results, the children stolen by regimes and placed for upbringing with high-ranking officials, the forbidding of literacy, the denial of property rights—all had precedents, and many of these were to be found, not in other cultures and religions, but within Western society, and within the “Christian” tradition itself. (I enclose “Christian” in quotation marks, since I believe that much of the Church’s behavior and doctrine during its two-millennia-long existence as a social and political organization would have been abhorrent to the person after whom it is named.)"