Why is ignorance so valued nowadays?
I have just been watching Doris Lessing on the Beeb. An island of sanity, wisdom and knowledge in a sea of vacuous ignorance. Oh, and she likes books, for those who might not have heard of her.
for the Nobel committee who approved of hers.
As for banning books - I don't understand the argument. There is no ONE book, that was the point of my original question to Solitaire - which book? Not even a tarot deck is a single book. My 78 pages might not be the same as yours. And thank the goddess for that! We need many many good books, many different authors and types of knowledge, to make a wise and knowledgeable world - and we need people to read and love books to keep the world sane.
I once had a nightwatchman in Zimbabwe who read my entire library - what I had out there. He couldn't read enough books. He said they gave him hope and helped him understand the world. He'd left school at 14. He came from an oral culture - and he understood both its virtues and its limits.
This question - books/no books would not even be asked in a culture where books are so difficult to come by and expensive that each is valued like a jewel - or more than a jewel: a piece of living magic.
As for parrotting books: there will always be parrots in life. I don't see the difference between people who parrot the vox pop, the voices in their heads, their neighbours, or the books they read. But on the whole, reading books does teach us discrimination, including in tarot reading. It's not enough to have flashes of intuition: you have to understand them and place them in context.
Banning or burning, approving and condemning books are other things that no one else has suggested... except you. 
Is there something you aren't telling us...