Spending $80 on a banned book made me see things differently

I found a first edition of 'The Anarchist Cookbook' at a used book store in Portland last year and paid about eighty bucks for it. In a lot of places, just having a book like that can get you in real trouble, which I never really thought about before. It made me wonder what other normal things are totally off limits somewhere else. Has anyone else picked up a book that's illegal in another country?

3 comments

3 Comments

black.beth3mo ago

Ever try to buy a copy of American Psycho in Australia? It's wild what gets banned where.

skylercooper3mo ago

Wait, you can't get it there at all? That's wild @black.beth. Censorship is so random lol.

ericschmidt2mo ago

Is it just me or does censorship always feel totally random like that? @skylercooper nailed it, the whole thing is super inconsistent. You look at something like American Psycho getting banned in Australia but then you can buy it at any bookstore in the US no problem. Meanwhile, we've got TikTok full of way worse stuff that nobody seems to care about lol. It's like different places just pick and choose what they want to freak out over based on whatever's trendy at the time.