It’s Banned Book Week again. Go read something controversial.

Here in the U.S., free speech is an extreme sport. Originally the “free speech” guaranteed by our constitution mostly meant political speech, but the definition has expanded to cover almost anything that isn’t an outright lie or imminent threat. Legally speaking, you can write almost anything you want and the government won’t step in to stop you; it’s perfectly legal for Twitter mobs to threaten your life, it’s perfectly legal for Reddit to be full of sad and bitter incel forums, it’s perfectly legal to hound someone off Tumblr for using the wrong pronouns or write books about the wonders of hard drugs.

Because of this, we’re a very weird country. Also because of this, we obsess over the idea that our kids will hear or read the “wrong things.” Americans are always complaining to school boards and local libraries about books that might ruin their children. Conservatives want to ban Harry Potter and anything with gay characters, liberals want to ban older books that aren’t Woke enough, religious fanatics want to remove books on evolution and atheists want to remove books with religious references . . . you can write whatever you want in our country but you can’t let kids get their hands on it.

I have kids, so I understand the impulse to protect them. Kids are impressionable and inexperienced and you kind of want to control their minds until they seem old enough to use them responsibly. I have some anxiety issues so truly, I get the impulse to freak out and hide your kids away from the big bad world.

But then I remember how many, many controversial books I have read, books that helpful adults would have ripped out of my hands had they known what I was doing. All those books were a vital part of my unofficial education, sharpening my curiosity and critical thinking skills and stoking my imagination and thirst for knowledge. Sure, they’re also why I’m so weird, but I’m also incredibly smart and thoughtful because of those books.

So in honor of Banned Book Week I thought I’d list just a few books I’m glad no one protected me from:

The first books I have a really clear memory of reading are Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series and Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series. The Little House series is out of favor because it’s not at all woke about race (though it’s a good picture of Wilder’s times and has some good nuance to it). Pierce’s books have never been challenged to my knowledge, but I read them when I was 10 or so and my parents did not know about the mild sex scenes in the later books.

Pretty much all the books I read in high school would have freaked out one adult or another. I read a whole lot of feminism, a whole lot of Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving, and somewhere in there I discovered Hunter S. Thompson of all people. If you’re not familiar, picture a 16-year-old nerdy 90’s goth reading about feminism and Hell’s Angels and weird sex. Because my parents were so busy with their own problems, they didn’t seem to care what I read as long as it wasn’t Satanic or Stephen King.

So when I went to college, that’s what I read. Only a little Stephen King but lots of other horror–Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, so much Clive Barker, bunches of short horror–and I bought and read the Satanic Bible for good measure. I read all these while going to a religious college and nobody really noticed. I did once have a roommate complain about my Nine Inch Nails albums and Salvador Dali prints, though. People are very dumb sometimes. And I shouldn’t have gone to religious college.

I never stopped reading controversial books, but now that I’m an adult it’s apparently my constitutional right to read and write anything I damn well please. I may have more thoughts on this as the week goes on, but the thing I know deepest is that I regret a lot of things, but I have no regrets about the books I’ve let into my life, and it scares me to think how easily some well-meaning adult could have snatched them away from me.

It’s Banned Book Week. Go read something controversial.