Ryan Holiday, a bestselling author and the owner of the Painted Porch Bookshop in Bastrop, has opened a small space next door to his store that carries only one kind of book: those that have faced removal from school and public libraries, or other forms of government and community censorship. Anyone can walk in and take one home for free.
The Banned Books Lending Library sits at 914 Main Street in Bastrop, in a roughly 150-square-foot space that once served as a barbershop waiting room when the building went up in the 1880s. Holiday's team had used the storefront for storage since they expanded the Painted Porch into the building in 2021.
The idea took shape after the United States Naval Academy canceled a talk that Holiday was scheduled to give, after he refused to remove slides from his presentation that criticized the academy’s decision to remove nearly 400 banned books from its main library.
"That sort of got me going down this banned books rabbit hole," Holiday says.
Holiday modeled the format after Bastrop’s many Little Free Libraries — boxes of donated books that people keep on their properties for anyone to take from.
The library opened to the public in mid-July, after about six months of work. In the short time since opening, Holiday has noticed a trend in people’s comments on social media.
“They go, ‘Oh, well, you can buy it on Amazon, [so] it's not banned.’ First of all, just because you can buy it on Amazon doesn’t mean it’s a good thing that it’s being removed from a library," says Holiday. "The point of a library is to make books accessible to people without them having to buy them."
"When people in literature or publishing talk about banned books, they don't just mean, like, oh, you'll go to jail if you have this book," he adds. "They mean books that school districts have tried to suppress or that libraries have had to put behind the counter."
He points to authors who face harassment or professional consequences over their work. In 2021, for example, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick canceled a speaking engagement by the writers of Forget the Alamo at the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin. The book examines the role slavery played at the Alamo.
According to the Texas Tribune, Penguin Press said the museum and its board of directors, including Gov. Greg Abbott, faced "increased pressure on social media about hosting the event," and Patrick called the book a "fact-free rewriting of TX history" on X (then Twitter).
That’s one of the books they carry at the bookstore, says Holiday, pointing out that while canceling this event couldn’t prevent people from having access to the book, it was a form of book censorship by the state.
“And that’s what we mean by banned books,” says Holiday
Holiday points to another incident involving a far sillier book, I Need a New Butt. An assistant principal in Mississippi, Toby Price, read the book to students and was fired, but later reinstated after a lengthy legal battle. In his termination letter, the Hinds County Schools Superintendent criticized Price for "unnecessary embarrassment, a lack of professionalism, and impaired judgment.”
"[I Need a New Butt] was not banned," he says. "But the purpose of firing that principal was to send a message about what books can and can't be read."
Holiday's definition of “banned” stretches well beyond the U.S. and the present day. The lending library's shelves hold Leo Tolstoy's A Calendar of Wisdom, which the Soviet Union banned over its religious content, next to American staples like To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Great Gatsby, and Huckleberry Finn. Readers have also mailed in copies of Milk and Honey, by poet and Holiday's friend Rupi Kaur, a submission that surprised Holiday until he checked how often the collection lands on banned book lists nationwide.
"It's more common than you thought," he says of book banning. "It affects more genres and titles than you think, and it doesn't do anything for people."
According to the American Library Association, it is also becoming more common in recent years. In 2025 alone, 4,235 unique book titles were challenged in public schools and libraries — the second highest number ever documented by ALA. The highest number was 4,240 in 2023. This is far above the annual average of 273 unique titles between the years of 2001 to 2020.
Holiday hopes the library does more than put free books in people's hands. He notices it starting conversations among visitors who stop to browse, even when they don't take anything.
"For the people who just want to talk, it just provokes a conversation,” he says. “That's ultimately the purpose of the space."
Books are moving fast. Holiday says his team already restocks more often than they expected, and they welcome donations from the community to help keep pace. Donated books can be dropped off in person or mailed to Painted Porch Bookshop, ATTN: Banned Books, 912 Main St, Bastrop, TX 78602.
Visitors can take a book, leave a book, or both. The library keeps the same hours as the Painted Porch: 10 am to 7 pm Mondays through Thursdays, plus Sunday; and 10 am to 8 pm Fridays and Saturdays.
