Banned Book Week celebrates the "Freedom to Read" from Sept 21 to Sept 27.

Bookish people and defenders of freedom of expression all over the globe support it. It has its own hashtag on Twitter #bannedbookweek or #bannedbooksweek.

How ironic, then, to be reading at the same time calls in the French press to boycott Valérie Trierweiler's memoir, Merci pour le Moment.

Bookstores that claim they will refuse to stock it. Critics who sniff at a book that we are supposed to believe is worse for our intellectual and moral development than the mega bestseller sold everywhere in France Cinquante Nuances de Grey. Politicos who, well, just don't want to know what it might say.

Ever since the vengeful Procopius, official historian to the great Byzantine emperor Justinian wrote his vicious, hilarious and probably pretty accurate Secret History have we relied on angry insiders for a glimpse of what really goes on inside the corridors of power.

But the irony of trying to squelch a book ON BANNED BOOK WEEK.

Kudos!

(well, ok, most of the calls to boycott the book were technically before Banned Book Week actually started... but still!)