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I read a lot of news, covering a wide range of topics, as often as I can. Some articles are interesting to me, while other make me want to roll my eyes.

What I’ve found increasingly annoying, however, is how often I still keep coming across news about book bans throughout the United States. Most recently, it was several school districts in Tennessee removing several manga (Japanese comics) series from its library shelves for review. (They might end up back on the shelves after all.)

I’m familiar with several series that were listed because I read them myself as a teenager, or at least watched the animated adaptions of the stories instead. Many might seem “objectional” if you read a page or two out of context. But if you read the whole series instead you’ll find that they often promote values of friendship, working together, overcoming hardships, and other similar ideals that would be good for young people to learn about and consider.

But you need to have reading comprehension skills in order to pick up on those lessons, and I’m beginning to think people calling for book bans lack that skill.

I digress, however, because I’m not here today to convince people about the merits of reading these specific stories. (Though, for the record, I think they’re fine.) It’s more that I’m increasingly concerned that a small group of people continue to want to dictate what literature other people have access to.

My concern is that by advocating for book bans, they’re taking away choices from other people.

If you read enough of these news articles, it’s always a parent who raises the concern. But instead of the parent simply removing access to the book for their own child – such as sitting down and telling the child why they don’t want them to read the book in question – they decided that no one else’s children should be allowed to read that book either, regardless of whether or not other parents have objections.

That’s what really bothers me.

A library contains a variety of books, and not all of them will be interesting to or geared towards everyone. If that’s the case, the reasonable thing to do is put the book back on the shelf and go find something else to read instead. Not (metaphorically) throwing the book in the trash so no one else can find it.

I remember when I was in school, some kids had strict guidelines from their parents on what they were allowed to watch on TV or music they could listen to. Other kids, however, were allowed to consume whatever they wanted, including things like R-rated movies and music with profane lyrics. But I don’t remember any parents going around trying to enforce their family’s rules (whether strict or relaxed) on the rest of the children. Because that’s silly, right? You might have opinions about how other families are raising their kids, but in the end, what they do isn’t up to you. It’s not your decision.

That kind of controlling attitude is, perhaps, way too prevalent within our society.

I’ve heard of instances, for example, with homeowner’s associations where a person might get in trouble for painting their front door an odd color or putting up a lot of holiday decorations or other similar things. But I always wonder why.

I can’t imagine any situation where I would go to a neighbor’s house and demand they change how it looks. It’s not my house! (I certainly can think of plenty of houses where I question their decorating choices, but all I do is raise my eyebrows as I drive by, and then mind my business as I return to my own home. My life is not negatively impacted in any way by seeing an ugly house.)

Maybe this is why our country feels so divisive these days? Even though this problem has been a problem for a long time.

For another example, segregation was, on a basic level, just telling Black people where they can go and what they can do. Use this entrance. Sit in this seat. Shop at this store. We’re deciding this for you and you have no choice otherwise.

Thankfully, enough people worked hard for years to fight against that until most people finally agreed that segregation was something we should leave in the past.

All of these examples are varying degrees of severity, but I think they all boil down to the basic principle of imposing your own view of life on other people.

Why can’t we just let people live?

Cellphones and laptops come from the store with factory default settings. But there’s no default setting for people. We’re all different, and we’re all just living our lives. There are billions of us just trying to get through one day at a time, and we have only this one planet to share.

It’s the holiday season, and there’s always an emphasis on kindness this time of year. So I’d like to ask everyone to consider the phrase: “live and let live.” And, even after the holidays are over, please continue to be respectful of others.

I hope that one day, at least, I’ll stop stumbling across book ban news stories.

Holly Taylor is a Staff Writer for Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact her at holly.taylor@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7206.