Monday Guilt Trip

Ooo, I’m so in trouble here!  On the Sunday nappy shop, I found a half-price copy of ‘Breaking Dawn’ in the supermarket and now I’m hooked in again!  I promised I wouldn’t do this … promised, promised, promised!  I was going to get it from the library.  I wasn’t going to buy any more of these books.  I was taking it one day at a time.  I was 54-days-free of Stephenie Meyer.  I looked at the bookshelves.  I thought I could handle it.  I was wrong!  Ho hum!  There’s just no hope for me.  Look for a review soon, seeing as I knocked out 300 pages of it yesterday already!

Banned Books Week on the Blogosphere

Check out Devourer of Books and The Book Lady’s Blog, they’re highlighting and reviewing Banned Books all this week in honour of Banned Books Week.  Well worth visiting their reviews (Book Lady has some great pictures with some big books, too!)

Another great post about book banning on The Drowning Machine.

Banned Books – An Emotive Issue

I’ve been working on a project library on LibraryThing with some other members, Banned Books Library, which aims to catalogue as many banned publications, past and present, worldwide as possible.  It’s been an educational experience thus far for me.  What has surprised me more than anything is that there seems to be a strong contemporary history of challenge within the USA, whereas for the UK, for example, much of the information is historical.  I wondered why, in this modern age in a country that is vociferous about it’s love of freedom (hello, anyone remember the ‘Freedom Fries’?), there is a vocal demographic that find literary censorship so acceptable.

Often I know, these challenges come from parents who want books removed from libraries and schools.  It left me wondering, as a parent myself, where I stand on the whole issue of literary freedom and availability to youngsters.  I can safely say that my parents never forbade me from reading anything I was interested in and I hope I can maintain that principle with my own daughter.  It’s hard, I know, when children become independent entities in the world – you cannot control absolutely the external influences and opinions that your children will be exposed to.  However, neither, in my opinion, should you.  I’m fully aware that my issues would be different ones to the majority of parents in the US challenging books.  I would have a problem with my child being exposed to any kind of religious literature if it was presented as fact – I’m happy for her to explore religions (well, maybe not happy, but I accept that she must understand about the beliefs of others, it’s the first step to respecting their right to have them), but I consider the Bible a dangerous fiction and would not want others to portray it as an historical document.  I have no intention of policing age-appropriateness of what she reads, but would probably not suggest myself that she picks up something with extremely adult themes before she is older.  That said, if she does, I wouldn’t just take it away.  I may suggest something that she would enjoy more and I’m hoping that growing up in a house choc-full of books, as I myself did, she will come to more adult material as she is ready for it.  I was always kept occupied by the wealth of books that were in my house, there wasn’t enough time for all of them so I rarely strayed into inappropriate ground.  These are my own, personal views.  I would never tell someone else how they should police and raise their own children.  That is one of the reasons why I find parents who challenge books irritating.  If you don’t want your child to read Harry Potter, don’t let them but please don’t try and force institutions into removing them from the shelves where my child can access them – I would never ask a public library to restrict access to their bibles.  For me, the crux is that I want my child to grow into an independent and thoughtful person, she doesn’t always have to agree with me, but I think you instill your own values in children as you raise them and must trust in them to find their own paths.

‘What’s the harm in banning a book?’  I’ve actually heard people say that, alongside others that find some banning acceptable (‘Well, Harry Potter’s ridiculous, but I can understand why they’ve removed that gay sex book’).  Banning books at all is a slippery slope.  If you look at the recent lists of banned and challenged books, many are challenged for religious reasons (often cited as promoting witchcraft or being anti-religion).  The same parents that find Philip Pullman’s books so offensive or that object to Harry Potter haven’t also requested that ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ be removed – obviously when it is a Christian allegory it’s OK.  If it questions that, best get it out of the clutches of our impressionable youth.  It appears all religions are not equal in all cases.  So, where do we draw the line.  It’s obviously one opinion pitted against another.  Who is qualified to mark the arbitrary point where something becomes unacceptable?

Many other books are challenged because they have content which touches on homosexuality, something a certain demographic doesn’t like.  To challenge and remove these books elevates a section of our society at the expense of marginalising another – it sends a message that it’s acceptable to attach value judgements to who people are.  That is as daft as saying we’re going to remove any books that have references to people who are not blond-haired and blue-eyed as they are the chosen few (hmm, I wonder which historical period decided that blond hair and blue-eyes denoted superiority ….).  What struck me as I catalogued past banning was how ridiculous some of the reasons seemed in the present day, how ignorant and outdated – surely people will look back at this period with similar scorn a 100 years in the future.  Another reason cited was that of racism, especially appended to books which dealt with or were written in a period of time when there were issues of slavery and race-discrimination.  Surely it is more educational to teach these books (some of which are great members of the literary canon) in the context of the political and social arena they were published into and born from?

Essentially for me, freedom of speech and ideas is a cornerstone of our society and to give away any of it, even by increments, begins the slide to restriction that more abhorrent political regimes have gone down before us (check out the amount of banning that took place in countries such as South Africa and Russia in the past).  I am a reader, I love books so they, for me, are the ultimate symbol of my freedom to think, learn and debate.  Take away books (and other forms of writing) and people have to physically come in contact with someone to exchange ideas.  I don’t always agree with what I read, but I want the ability to read it.  Take that away from me and I am intellectually crippled to a degree.  As I said in the title, an emotive issue.  Whatever your stance on it, I can recommend that you check out the Banned Books Library on LibraryThing, it’s a work-in-progress but a very educational one!

Tuesday Thingers: Banned Books Week

So, latest Tuesday Thingers from Boston Bibliophile is very topical as this week is Banned Books Week.  Below is the list of the most-challenged books of the 1990s straight from the ALA website. I’ve struck through the ones I’ve read and highlighted in bold those I have in my library.

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

LibraryThing is Hiring – Check It Out!

Oh, oh, oh how I wish I lived in Maine – lobsters and LibraryThing, what could be better.  As the UK is a bit too far afield for now (but I’m always keeping my eye out for that European opportunity ), I thought I’d draw others’ attention to the LT Blog post about it.  Go on, go apply for my ideal job!  I won’t hate you for it, I promise.

E-Books, E-Readers, Kindles and the like …

So, it being Monday and me having nothing better to occupy my mind … I was considering the whole Kindle issue.  Let’s contextualise this a bit first – I’m an iPod freak.  I never leave home without it and the more songs I can cram onto it the better!  I have bought music online in digital format and I listen to my CDs more on the pod than I do on the stereo.  I love having my music library to browse through wherever I am.  So, I find I’m asking why am I not so excited about the advent of a digital age for books?  Thus far, I’ve come up with several potential reasons for this.  Primarily, I love books – not the words inside them, but the physical books.  I fondle books and I smell books.  I get excited (in a geeky way) about the quality of paper and the type of font.  But why should this put me off ebook readers?  My husband has an equally geeky attachment to CDs but as soon as he gets a new one, it gets grabbed and stacked onto the pod.  What about the experience of reading?  Definitely that’s part of it, I like holding a book and I love bookmarks.  However, the Kindle age would mean that I wouldn’t need to carry a backpack full of them around, I could take an e-reader on the daily commute and save the shoulder muscles.  Why, then, am I not rushing out to Kindle-ise my life?  I’ve come to the conclusion the flaw is in the essential difference between books and CDs in the digital age.  I have 1000+ books and we have 1000+ CDs.  When I got my first iPod, I spent an enjoyable weekend grabbing all my CDs and installing my music collection on the little beauty.  How would I spend the first weekend with a Kindle?  Well, I guess that would be sitting on Amazon spending money I didn’t have, buying books I already own in digital format.  This would never work for me.  My iPod is an addition to my music collection – I can still own the physical CDs.  With Kindles and the like, I have to make a choice – be digital or paper or I have to buy books twice.  I can’t spend a weekend grabbing my library, it doesn’t work that way.  I can’t enjoy reading the original copy of a book and use the Kindle for my long distance travel or weeks away.  The difference in media, music vs words, means that it will never be practical to grab your book collection.  This is why I’ll never be a Kindle convert.  What about the rest of you out there?

Tuesday Thingers

Today’s Question: Favorite Authors. Who do you have named in your LT account as favorite authors? Why did you choose them? How many people share your choices? Can you share a picture of one of them?

It’s always a toughie when someone asks me to name my favourite authors – so many authors, so little time.  I’ve added my ultimate favourites to my LT list and am now adding new favourites as I find them.  For me, to be an LT favourite they have to be one I love (doh!) – roll up the old favourites Hunter S. Thompson, Emile Zola, Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, Ted Hughes, Haruki Murakami, Gabriel Garcia Marquez – but I’m also adding new ones I find along the way.  For those, I would be a bit dubious about committing to a single-book author – to be a favourite, you really have to have staying power – but I’m certainly including ones that I feel compelled to read everything they have written/write (let’s give a high-five to Sarah Waters and Cormac McCarthy on this one).  I don’t add the fantasy/SF writers I read – they’re just too prolific and even the best of them don’t have deep literary merit even if I love them, so they don’t get favourite author priviledges I’m afraid (now if there was a guilty pleasures category, that would be a whole nuther thang!).  I think that my favourites are pretty well-shared in the LT community (but as I read more, I’m sure that one or two oddities will crop up … I also keep remembering people I missed off the list …).  I share three with Abby, so that’s pretty much like sharing with a famous person .

Review: Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

I have seen this book regularly described as a “lesbian classic” and, having read it, would like to take issue with the appending of “lesbian” to that phrase. This book is a big, bawdy, history-soaked classic – to try and put it into a sub-genre of classic lit does it a disservice. It belongs front and centre in the ‘classic’ pile! ……

Read the review in full over on my reviews blog.

Author Bio: B.B.

B.B. was the pen-name of author and illustrator Denys Watkins-Pitchford, who was born on 25th July 1905 in Lamport, Northamptonshire.  He was home-educated until, aged 15, he left to attend Northampton School of Art.  In 1924, he moved on to attend the Royal College of Art in London and eventually ended up as an assistant art master at Rugby School where he spent the majority of his working life.  His pen-name, B.B., refers to a gauge of lead shot used to shoot geese – it’s a large gauge of shot – although he illustrated his books under his real name.  He married in 1939 and was widowed in 1974.  He and his wife Cecily had 2 children, 1 died aged 7 of acute nephritis (known as Bright’s disease at that time).  In 1986 he was awarded an honorary MA by Leicester University and was awarded an M.B.E. in 1990.  Unfortunately, he died the same year whilst under anaesthesia.

Further information can be found at here or in the Wikipedia entry.

Review: The Little Grey Men by B.B.

This novel is one of the all-time great river novels – ‘Heart of Darkness’ with little folk. A quest for their long-lost brother, Cloudberry, leads Dodder and his brothers on a journey of great bravery and excitement. Cloudberry travelled upstream years before to find the source of the Folly and never returned…..

Read the full review over on my reviews blog….