Freedom To Read (Adult)

Freedom to Read Week is an annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom.

Despite having strong traditions of free expression and free inquiry, Canada also has a long-standing tradition of censorship. Historically, books and magazines have often been quietly removed from libraries and classrooms. Freedom to Read Week was founded in 1984 to challenge the covert nature of censorship, creating a broader awareness of these ongoing challenges to Canadian writing. It also encourages Canadians to actively defend their right to publish, read and write freely and to widen their understanding of the negative effects of censorship, not just on readers but on writers and publishers as well. Over the years, Freedom to Read Week has become a regular feature of the annual programming of schools, libraries and literary groups across Canada.

Updated December 30, 2025
L
Lambton County Library February Recommended Reading
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
The Communist manifesto
Marx, Karl
Paper Book
The Communist Manifesto,is the most influential political call-to-arms ever written. In the century and a half since its publication the world has been shaken repeatedly by those who sought to make its declamations a reality. But the focus of this modern edition is not primarily...

Reason for challenge: political ideology

Fight Club : a novel
Palahniuk, Chuck.
Paper Book
In his debut novel, Chuck Palahniuk showed himself to be his generation's most visionary satirist. Fight Club's estranged narrator leaves his lackluster job when he comes under the thrall of Tyler Durden, an enigmatic young man who holds secret boxing matches in the basement of bars. There two...

Reason for challenge: violent content, anti-social behaviour

The handmaid's tale
Atwood, Margaret
Paper Book
A New York Times Bestseller A Booker Prizeâe"winning Author Soon to be a Hulu Series Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now...

Reason for challenge: violence, offensive language

Beyond order 12 more rules for life
Paper Book
The companion volume to 12 Rules for Life offers further guidance on the perilous path of modern life.    In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and celebrated professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto Dr. Jordan B. ...

Reason for challenge: political ideology

Gossip girl : a novel
Von Ziegesar, Cecily.
Paper Book
Serena van der Woodsen is back from boarding school--but is she still the Upper East Side's It Girl? The wickedly funny first book in the #1 New York Times bestselling series that inspired the original hit CW show and the HBO Max series. Welcome to New York City...

Reason for challenge: sexual content, offensive language, LGBTQ+

The love hypothesis a novel
Hazelwood, Ali
Paper Book
When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos.

Reason for challenge: scientific inaccuracies, sexual content

Fun home : a family tragicomic
Bechdel, Alison
Paper Book
CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER  ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year * National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist  Winner of the Stonewall Book Award *...

Reason for challenge: LGBTQ+, sexual content

Happy place
Henry, Emily.
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ∙ A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry. "The beach-read master...

Reason for challenge: sexual content

A clockwork orange
Burgess, Anthony
Paper Book
A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where the criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his...

Reason for challenge: sexual content, violent content, immoral

Essex County
Lemire, Jeff.
Paper Book
Read the beloved classic that inspired the CBC miniseries! New York Times BestsellingcartoonistJeff Lemirepays tribute to his roots withEssex County, an award-winning trilogy of graphic novels set in an imaginary version of his hometown, the eccentric farming community of...

Reason for challenge: offensive language

The bluest eye : a novel
Morrison, Toni
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME * From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner--a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace. * With a new introduction by Jacqueline...

Reason for challenge: racism, sexual content, incest

I know why the caged bird sings
Angelou, Maya.
Ebook
Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself....

Reason for challenge: racism, sexual content, LGBTQ+

The color purple
Walker, Alice
Paper Book
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick Winner of the Pulitzer Prize * Winner of the National Book Award   Published to unprecedented acclaim,The Color Purple established Alice Walker as a major voice in...

Reason for challenge: sexual content, LGBTQ+, offensive language, violent content

Carrie
King, Stephen
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MARGARET ATWOOD *  Stephen King's legendary debut, the bestselling smash hit that put him on the map as one of America's favorite writers * In a world where bullies rule, one girl holds a...

Reason for challenge: violent content, depiction of religion

Lolita
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich
Paper Book
The most famous and controversial novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century tells the story of Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. * With a new introduction by Claire Messud "The conjunction of a sense of...

Reason for challenge: obscene

The satanic verses
Rushdie, Salman.
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths."--Newsday ...

Reason for challenge: blasphemous

Snow falling on cedars
Guterson, David.
Paper Book
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * PEN/Faulkner Award Winner *  A gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric masterpiece of courtroom suspense--one that leaves us shaken and changed.  "Haunting .... A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at...

Reason for challenge: sexual content

Flowers for Algernon
Keyes, Daniel
Paper Book
Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, this powerful, classic science fiction story is about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache. Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ,...

Reason for challenge: offensive language

Brave new world
Huxley, Aldous.
Ebook

Reason for challenge: sexual content, offensive language, anti-family themes, anti-religious themes

The diviners
Laurence, Margaret
Paper Book
In The Diviners, Morag Gunn, a middle aged writer who lives in a farmhouse on the Canadian prairie, struggles to understand the loneliness of her eighteen-year-old daughter. With unusual wit and depth, Morag recognizes that she needs solitude and work as much as she needs the love of her...

Reason for challenge: sexual content, offensive language

Fall on your knees
MacDonald, Ann-Marie
Ebook
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book Following the curves of history in the first half of the twentieth century, Fall On Your Knees takes us from haunted Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, through the battle fields of World War One, to the emerging jazz scene of...

Reason for challenge: sexual content, violent content, LGBTQ+

The book of negroes
Hill, Lawrence
Paper Book
Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle--a string of slaves-- Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and...

Reason for challenge: offensive language

Wenjack
Boyden, Joseph
Paper Book
Shortlisted for the 2017 OLSN Northern Lit Award An Ojibwe boy runs away from a North Ontario Indian School, not realizing just how far away home is. Along the way he's followed by Manitous, spirits of the forest who comment on his plight, cajoling, taunting, and...

Reason for challenge: cultural appropriation

Maus : a survivor's tale
Spiegelman, Art.
Paper Book
The definitive edition of the graphic novel acclaimed as "the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust" (Wall Street Journal) and "the first masterpiece in comic book history" (The New Yorker) * PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * One of Variety's "Banned and...

Reason for challenge: depiction of Nazi symbols

Fahrenheit 451 A novel
Bradbury, Ray.
Ebook
Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury's internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before. Guy Montag is a fireman....

Reason for challenge: offensive language, violent content, religious and political ideology


Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.