I like to talk up the idea of “guerrilla scholarship”, which which I define as the notion that one can do serious scholarship outside the embrace of academia. But this story takes the “guerrilla” part to a whole new wonderful level.

An as-yet unnamed young woman who goes by the nom de libre of Nekochan is running a clandestine lending library out of a school locker consisting entirely of books that are banned at the Catholic school she attends. She started this library because she liked many of the books that were on the list, and as she read others she realized that there was some great stuff; classic works. Animal Farm, Paradise Lost, Canterbury Tales, and many others. She explains:

“I was absolutely appalled, because a huge number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well… I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book because he heard it was very good AND it was banned! This happened a lot and my locker got to overflowing with banned books, so I decided to put the unoccupied locker next to me to a good use. I now have 62 books in that locker, about half of what was on the list.”