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All over the planet people have tried to prevent others from reading books they consider immoral, unethical or just plain dangerous – and it seems that fictional worlds aren't safe from this either.

So in celebration of Banned Books week and the tireless efforts of librarians, publishers and booksellers to protect your right and freedom to read, here are five books that have been banned, suppressed or challenged in, um, books. (Warning: Spoilers!)

The Grasshopper Lies Heavy (The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick): In The Man in the High Castle, the Nazis won WW2 and America has been taken over by the Japanese. In this alternate history there is a book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which is in itself another alternate history in which the Allies won the War. The Nazis have banned the book because they don't win in it, and they don't want people going around getting hope that they don't have to live under Hitler's oppressive rule.

To complicate matters, although the Allies win in Grasshopper, the reality portrayed in that book is vastly different from ours – Hitler lives to be tried at Nuremberg for a start. This means that The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is an alternate history of an alternate history of our reality. Still with me? Ok, next up we have:

I hate to admit this, but books have a—pun intended—shelf life. Sometimes they are damaged by accident and sometimes they just don't stand up to the passage of time. However, there are some incredible artists out there who make old books beautiful again by using them as a medium for awesome sculptures. Here's a taste of what five of these super talented people have produced.

Look I get it, at some point someone had a horrible experience in a library, and as a result we librarians are doomed to be typecast as grey haired old biddies who wear horn-rimmed glasses while we shush everything in sight. Thankfully we have used this stereotype to our advantage over the years to hide our true purpose; a purpose I am about to reveal to you know.