Alberta’s recent wave of book bans, aimed at “protecting” children from dangerous ideas such as empathy, nuance, and sentences longer than a tweet, has had an unexpected side effect: people are actually buying books.
Local bookstores report a surge in sales as parents, teens, and even bored uncles scramble to snag the newly forbidden titles. “The government said it was corrupting literature,” said one bookseller. “Turns out the only thing it’s corrupting is my inventory.”
Publishers are also delighted, calling the bans “the best marketing campaign since Oprah.” Some shops now label titles with a bright sticker reading BANNED IN ALBERTA, which customers treat as both a warning and a dare.
Meanwhile, officials expressed shock at the spike in literacy, with one MLA muttering, “We were trying to stop people from thinking, not encourage it.”
Demand remains so strong that residents are reportedly reading books in public, another troubling trend for the province’s censors.
