bonfireI'm sure the Cleveland DJs who decided to throw an old-fashioned book burning of Fifty Shades of Grey thought they were pretty darn cool. Especially when someone threw an actual Nook onto the flames -- that had to throw up some spectacular sparks! Too bad their grand plan kind of backfired, huh?

By throwing E.L. James' naughty novels into a burning pit outside a bar, Chad Zumock and Alan Cox just made the so-called mommy porn a whole lot hotter -- at least among the literary set.

You haven't by chance heard of Read a Banned Book Week? Or maybe the list of "Most Frequently Challenged Books" that are regularly put up in American libraries? You haven't really made it in the world of literature until someone's tried to get you pulled from a few shelves.

You know what else has been burned over the years? The Bible. The Koran. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. H.G. Wells' The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. Just to name a few.

When a book becomes taboo, it doesn't have to be particularly well written (and I'm not saying James' Twilight fan fiction is ... the cheesy lines abound). All that matters is that someone tried to destroy the words on the page because they disagreed with it, and voila, it's taboo. Even the book snobs with noses so high in the air they risk drowning if it rains find themselves tempted to give it a go just to see what the fuss is all about.

So if you love Fifty Shades of Grey, go ahead, tell all the haters that it now ranks right up there with the Harry Potter series and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. And if you hate it, go ahead and keep on hating it ... but you might want to save the matches for lighting candles.

Would you take part in a Fifty Shades of Grey book burning?

 

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