To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee was the first book selected in Allegheny County's "One Book, One Community" program two years ago.

The book, which inspired an award-winning film, is one of the most read and beloved books of the past 50 years. It's also No. 1 on the Top 10 Banned Books List this year.

It's among good company:

"Brave New World" (No. 3), "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (No. 4), "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (No. 5) and "Fahrenheit 451" (No. 7) are the best-known titles.

The others are "King & King & Family" (No. 2), a children's book about a gay couple by Linda De Haan and Stern Nijland; "Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers" (No. 6); "Kaffir Boy" (No. 9), Mark Mathabane's memoir about apartheid; and "Stones From the River" (No. 10), a novel by Ursula Hegi set in her native Germany in wartime. Even Oprah picked this book for her club.

The American Booksellers Association compiled the list through its BookSense program, which charts sales in independent bookstores.

There's another list out there -- the American Library Association's "Most Challenged." These are books in libraries, both public and school, that receive complaints, usually from parents.

Among the titles that took the most heat were the "Alice" series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck, "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers, "Bridge to Terabithia" by Katherine Paterson and "Go Ask Alice," an anonymously written drug memoir.

All of this information is my buildup to Banned Books Week, which starts tomorrow. The theme this year -- "Elect to Read a Banned Book" -- is the logical tie-in with the presidential campaign.

Books -- all written material, in fact -- have always been a source of concern in American society despite constitutional protection. The First Amendment has not prevented authorities from censoring, banning and even destroying writing in the past, but these days, there's more reason to be worried.

It's called the USA Patriot Act, specifically Section 215. Passed in the days after Sept. 11, the measure was designed to ease restrictions in the war against terrorism, but wartime tends to have a chilling effect on constitutional rights.

Section 215 exposes readers, libraries and bookstores to secret searches by federal authorities. It's been challenged almost from the day it went into effect, culminating this year in the Campaign for Reader Privacy.

This effort, a project of the library and booksellers associations and the PEN/American Center, winds up Wednesday in Washington, in the middle of Banned Books Week.

The drive collected about 170,000 signatures on a petition urging Congress to retire the odious section next year, when the act is due to expire.

The Bush administration is the act's biggest fan. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft spent more than $200,000 in federal funds in 2003 traveling the country in support of the act by speaking before handpicked audiences. His appearances have not been open to the public, even though the public paid for them.

Banned Books Week will be celebrated (if that's the right word) here with two events:

Teen Banned Books Event will be today at 2 p.m. in the wonderfully renovated Carnegie Library in Oakland. It's sponsored by the library's Teen Advisory Board and the American Civil Liberties Union. There will be readings of banned books and a discussion on the First Amendment.

The ninth annual Read Out will be at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Oakland library's lecture hall. Along with readings, the program includes a medley of banned songs. The ACLU and library also are sponsoring this one.

The events are free, and unlike Ashcroft's performances, open to all.

I'll close with remarks by Tawni O'Dell, the Indiana, Pa., novelist who spoke at the Post-Gazette Book and Author event last Sunday:

"Even in this technologically advanced age of the Internet and DVD players and 600-channel TVs, when we are constantly being told nobody reads anymore, nothing is more powerful than a book. Only a book can rouse enough outrage among certain people to make them want to actually erase it from our consciousness.

"We don't ban movies; we give them a rating. We don't ban music; we give it a warning label. We don't ban an offensive TV show; we simply switch the channel from Fox.

"But we still ban books. This is because there is no persuasive tool more powerful than the written word."