Next week, Sept 28 - Oct. 4, is Banned Books week!
Post an answer to these questions:
1. What book(s) would you like to see banned, and why?
2. What banned book(s) have you read, and why?
3. Do you agree that adults should be prevented from reading books other adults find objectionable, and why/why not?
To answer my own questions:
1. No book should be banned from the adult shelves. At most, there should be a "restricted" section that only those 18+ could enter.
2. Lots! Huckeberry Finn; the Wizard of Oz; The Diary of Anne Frank; Our Bodies, Ourselves; the list goes on and on. I read the latter because an effort was in the works to have it banned, and I wanted to find out why. The others I had already read before I knew they had been banned.
3. No adult should be forbidden access to books. It's a safe way of exploring the world, including other thoughts and cultures than one's own. The adults in question should be responsible for monitoring, and setting limits on, the books read by their own children.
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Comments: 12
I've never fully understood the problem with a book such as Catcher in the Rye. All books are valuable especially to readers.
Yes, I have read books that were banned. Peeps need to live and let live.
Does watching the movie count? ( Wizard of Oz). Oh I did read Huck Finn.
Any adult should be able to read it, but let's be clear: this was a "terrorist manual" of it's day. Any person who wanted to cause harm to society could find hundreds of ways to do so, in these pages. I wonder if it's still in print, in it's original form. I'll be back, after a Google search.
http://www.tenant.net/Community/steal/
http://www.amazon.com/Steal-This-Book-Abbie-Hoffman/dp/156858217X
http://www.eriswerks.org/steal.html
I see that I focused heavily on the "bomb making" chapter of the book, as a kid. It's more of a "snapshot" of the radical left from that era, now, and I still wonder if the text is the same that I read in the early-mid '70's. Lots of stuff about "freeloading," along with the bombing and weapons info. This was a rightly considered "scandalous," if not downright "Anti-American," at the time, which was why we ate it up, as kids in the '70's. Abbie Hoffman committed suicide some years ago, probably because of George W. Bush. He couldn't destroy "the man," so he destroyed himself, it seems. A very sad story.
You can also watch a five minute video of a ~"Divine Intervention"~ ~"event"~ at www.MySpace.com/Love_God_Is_Love
This was the second time this ~"event"~ had happened to me. The first time it didn't last long enough for me to film it. But this time the curtain ~"pulsed"~ for more than four hours! This was either caused or allowed to happen by that ~"Spiritual Intelligence"~ referred to as ~"IAM THAT IAM"~ i.e. ~"God"~.
Of course, no book should be banned. I've read some in my day ("Ulysses" by James Joyce, "Lolita" by Nabakov, "Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie, and probably more I can't think of right now). Those who ban books probably don't read enough, I say.
I had a friend (my age) who once tried to convince me that all rock music started in India, therefore was bad. (his preacher had told him so!) I said, "Dude, you were there! You know as well as I do that Indian raga had only a minor effect on rock for a short period of time in the late '60's. By then, rock had been around for over 10 years!" I didn't convince him that his preacher was wrong, believe it or not.
How does a human being develop the mindset that tells them, "because I don't agree with what that book/film/song says, NO ONE should be ALLOWED to experience it"? Is it all about control?
Don't forget, folks, that the first thing Hitler did when taking control was to burn a lot of books. The Catholic church restricted who could even learn to read during the Dark Ages (hence the name). BANNED BOOKS RULE!!