peanut butter & chocolate: literacy & the freedom to read

This is Banned Books Week. Banning books seems to me so self-evidently wrong that I don't actually have anything to say on the subject. Except, hey. Support intellectual freedom. Read a banned book.

Last Drink Bird Head, a collection of flash fiction, the proceeds of which go to ProLiteracy, is available for pre-order. I'm in Last Drink Bird Head, along with a really astonishing plethora of cool people (Gene Wolfe! Peter Straub! the full list of contributors is on the ordering page); my contribution begins as follows:

Their names don’t translate.

We can look at the symbols of their language, and we can identify
them.

Last.

Drink.

Bird.

Head.

We can open the doors with our machines, and we can investigate
what we find: the dust, the bones, the leathery remnants of skin, the
stains of spilled blood.

They were oxygen-breathers, like us.