An Associated Press wire story reports that Danish courts yesterday ruled that a memoir written by a special forces member — and that the Danish military had been trying to block — could be published. The military had tried to prevent the publication of the book due to “national security” reasons: the book discusses missions in which the author, Thomas Rathsack, participated in Iraq and Afghanistan, although many details (and all names) were changed.

Interestingly enough, the court’s reason for the ruling had seemingly less to do with freedom of speech and more to do with the fact that sections of the book (and in one case, the entire manuscript) had already been published in local papers. So Ranger—At War with the Elite will hit Danish bookstores soon. (As far as I can tell, it is not being translated into English. If it were, I would recommend calling it Jaegerkorps, Jaegerbombs and see how quickly it reaches the top of the NYT Bestseller list. Yes, “Jaegerkorps” is the official name of the special forces unit Rathsack was a part of. And I’m sure they planted many, many Jaegerbombs.)

In other Banned Books news, the official Bannedbooksweek.org website has posted a map of all the recently disputed books in the US (2007—present). Interestingly enough, from the look of the map there is a bizarre concentration of cases on the East Coast — the Northeast to be exact. Its bewildering how many cases there are nationally (120 at the time I counted), ranging from Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird and Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the beloved cartoon Tintin: Au Congo to that dastardly occult book Harry Potter. Most cases of disputed books occur in classrooms and local libraries, another worrying trend.

Banned Books Week starts this Saturday, so stop by your local bookstore and invest in a book that somebody out there is afraid that you’ll read. I haven’t picked yet, but I’m leaning towards curling up on the couch with the entire Gossip Girl series, the 7th most frequently challenged book of the last year. I’m ready to be scandalized.