Walking into the Earl Warren Showgrounds during Planned Parenthood’s annual book sale almost resembles entering a labyrinth of literature.
Rows upon rows of folding tables create a maze through more than 150,000 items. There are mysteries and memoirs, cookbooks and classics, science fiction and self-help. There are CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, puzzles and games.
The Planned Parenthood book sale runs through Sunday at Earl Warren Showgrounds.
You can find books about cocktails named after classic novels.
Or even books people have tried to remove from library shelves.
And, somewhere among it all, apparently enough books exist – books that deny conventional description – to warrant an entire section dedicated to books deemed “Offbeat and Oddities.”
For about 300 volunteers, finding a place for them all becomes a year-round job.
“Oh gosh,” sale co-chair Joanne “JoJo” Snyder said when asked to name the strangest book she’s encountered. “There’s no way to call that one.”
Former sale chair Fran Antenore had an answer. One year, volunteers encountered an oversized art book devoted to images of large penises.
“It is a book of big penises,” Antenore said.
It’s safe to say that one didn’t require much interpretation.
Other titles scattered around the sale are a bit more playful. “Tequila Mockingbird” by Tim Federle offers literary-inspired cocktail recipes. Snyder pulled out “Eats, Shoots, & Leaves,” Lynne Truss’s book about the sometimes dramatic consequences of punctuation.
The sale contains books spanning more than 50 categories, all donated by the community. The annual event has been a Santa Barbara tradition for more than five decades and raises roughly half a million dollars each year for health services provided by Planned Parenthood California Central Coast.
But one of the most popular sections within the sale is devoted to books that someone decided did not belong on a shelf.
The banned books section has titles that, to many, could be considered unsurprising but that sit alongside some entries that are… somewhat less obvious.
George Carlin’s “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” sits there. That checks out.
But so does Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, the vampire-romance series that became a virtually inescapable pop-culture phenomenon in the late 2000s.
The series was also among the American Library Association’s most frequently challenged books in both 2009 and 2010. Objections reported to the association included sexual content, religious viewpoints and concerns that the books were unsuitable for their intended age group.
“Twilight” is far from alone.
The American Library Association distinguishes between a book “challenge” – an attempt to remove or restrict access to a title – and a “ban,” in which the material is actually removed.
Those have seen a sharp increase in recent years.
The association documented 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025, compared with an annual average of 273 between 2001 and 2020. In recent years, the most common objections pertain to issues involving political or religious viewpoints, sexual content, LGBTQ+ representation, or carry messages tied to race or social justice.
At the Earl Warren Showgrounds, however, being banned can be good for business.
“We always sell out,” Snyder said.
The dedicated banned books section is relatively new, although the sale has featured challenged titles for years.
Antenore said volunteers created a banned books list roughly six years ago and distributed it among those responsible for individual categories. Some maintained small banned-book collections within their own individual sections.
About three years ago, though, the books got a table of their own.
“When we really started highlighting it was when so many books started being banned,” Antenore said.
Several volunteers with backgrounds in literature now keep track of challenged and banned titles around the country, Snyder said. And when one arrives among the community donations, volunteers flag it in an internal system and send it on to the dedicated section.
By the end of the sale, Snyder said, the table is typically bare.
The popularity comes as battles over books have become increasingly prominent in schools and libraries nationwide. According to the American Library Association, in 2025, 92% of challenges came from pressure groups, government officials or other decision makers, while fewer than 3% originated with individual parents.
Book censorship, at one point, conjured images of bonfires. But today, the fight over books is more likely to unfold on library and school shelves rather than around a fire.
At the Earl Warren Showgrounds, nobody is burning any books.
Instead, volunteers spend the year collecting, sorting, pricing, and then placing books onto tables to find their soon-to-be new homes.
Luz Reyes-Martín, vice president of advocacy and engagement for Planned Parenthood California Central Coast, sees a connection between access to books and information and a broader objective within the organization.
“It’s all about being educated, educating yourself, pursuing knowledge, pursuing whatever your personal goals are,” Reyes-Martín said.
All of the books begin the same way – as donations.
Community members drop them off throughout the year, and volunteers sort through the arrivals, check their condition and decide which of the sales dozens of categories – conventional or otherwise – should become their next stop.
Some donations are more valuable than others.
“We get signed copies of rarities that we sell for thousands of dollars,” Snyder said.
And despite perennial predictions about shrinking attention spans and the death of print, Snyder said she hasn’t seen much evidence that Santa Barbara is finished with books. She estimated attendance at this year’s sale was running about 25% higher than the previous year.
“The most important thing to know is that it’s entirely volunteer-run,” Reyes-Martín said. “There’s an amazing group of volunteers that actually work year-round to prepare for this sale.”
Then, after months of sorting a labyrinth’s worth of literature, they wait for readers to empty the tables.
“These people show up,” Snyder said. “Nobody gets paid.”
