Haruki Murakami Yanked from School District Reading List

By Dianna Dilworth 

A New Jersey school district has pulled two novels from its required reading list after parents complained about the works. Haruki Murakami‘s Norwegian Wood and Nic Sheff‘s Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines were both pulled from the list after parents complained about their gay sex scenes. 

Fox News has more: “The books were on a required summer reading list for middle school and high school students. The district decided to pull the books off the list, with the start of school just days away. ‘There were some words and language that seemed to be inappropriate as far as the parents and some of the kids were concerned,’ said Chuck Earling, superintendent of Monroe Township Schools in Williamstown, N.J.”.

In other censorship news, last week a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle book was banned from a Virginia school district for its depiction of Mormons. In response, we provided you the link to the free download of the banned book A Study in Scarlet.

To fight against book censorship, Banned Books Week, which is happening September 24 to October 1 this year, encourages readers to pick up banned books. Check out our Haruki Murakami playlist on Spotify when you pick up a copy of his books…