It's Your Turn To Ban A Book!

[shereads]

Min sent me a news story about librarians banning Jon Stewart's "America the Book."

It seems unfair that librarians and school boards should have exclusive rights to remove offensive books from the shelves.

It's my turn, and I'm going to ban Readers' Digest Condensed Books. If you're that eager for a book to be over with, you shouldn't have been reading it to begin with.

Banned. You can't get more condensed that that.




Your turn.

 

[shereads]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Banned Book

It was the nekked Supreme Court justices that did it. Those poor librarians.

 

[minsue]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Banned Book

It was the nekked Supreme Court justices that did it. Those poor librarians.

If they'd been real nekkid pics of our esteemed (or maligned, depending on the case ) justices, I'd have led the charge to ban them myself.

*shudder*

Goddammit! Now I can't get the horrid mental images out of my head. That'll learn me to mock justice.

 

[Belegon]

Can I ban the Bible? Seems like turn about would be fair play....

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

The constant replay of a story like this just reminds me that Farenheit 451 was burned.

Instead of turnabouts, can I just ban banning books. Or better yet anti-ban all books. If a book is no longer published by a company, the company agrees henceforth to make it open source and it is placed in hard copy in certain libraries and in e-copy on an electronic library. So many books are so hard to track down already. Why make it harder by stores refusing to sell and libraries refusing to shelve?

 

[shereads]

The constant replay of a story like this just reminds me that Farenheit 451 was burned.

Jon Stewart is in good company. Huckleberry Finn is one of the most-banned books in American school libraries because it contains the "n" word, and people are too rigid to consider the redeeming nature of the context.

You'll have your wish, Luc. As long as there's internet access, there will be people who defy censorship by uploading and distributing banned books.

It's unfortunate that this kind of censorship is classist. It limits the options of people who don't have the means to buy books, and who have to rely on public libraries for access. They're the same people who are least likely to have internet access at home.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

Yeah, but the same libraries also usually have free access to computers with internet. They have "filters" but the filters are usually "government quality". So while they're banning America the Book to "protect the children". The same children can watch John Trenchcoat accessing the Sexy Bondage Tots website.

It's also why in Utopialand I'd have a couple of hard copies of every book ever published in a couple of superlibraries which would then ship to other libraries if a request came through.

Alternatively, these copies could be printouts of the ebook if hard copies become very rare items.



Sigh, the problem with the open source texts is that the copyright laws, bought and sold by self-indulgant Disney executives who still want to make exclusive money for Mickey Mouse are preventing other less popular works from being freed. The language inadvertently prevents old films whose real copyright holders are lost to history from being copied to digital media before the reels they are on disintegrate. It prevents old cult books from getting on a list before most copies are lost to posterity.

On top of these is the usual problem of having it uploaded. The existing projects mostly deal with the classics or the popular old works. But what if you are a fan of early 20th century romantica? You need to find someone as obsessed as you with it, with a copy of the book, the urge to put it online, and the luck that he puts it somewhere you can find.

Perhaps an overpopularization of Project Gutenberg (sp?) and a massive drive. There was a push moving, still is I hope, to separate the Disneys from the Plan 9 from Outer Spaces. Basically it would require copyright holders to renew their copyright every X years or else it would become open source and legally allowed to be added to an online open source database. Hopefully it will pass, but I doubt Disney and co like anything that resembles the short end of the wedge.

Sigh, the world of Ideal Utopia and the cold Dystopia of Reality. It brings you down sometime.

 

[Kassiana]

Jeff Fain's The Burning. Dreadful spelling and grammar, horrible characters, utterly misunderstands Paganism...yet he was trying to defend it.

It is entertaining in a ghastly way, though.

 

[TheEarl]

High Society by Ben Elton. I used to like this author, now I'm not buying another of his books until it can be proven that I'll like it. A fantastic premise about an MP using his Member's Bill to introduce a proposal to legalise all controlled substances, so that they can actually be controlled. The only problem is that it's shockingly written, the humour's flat, the satire's obvious, the twist can be seen coming a mile away and the main character's a bastard. Not the kind of bastard you like to hate, more the kind of person that you really don't want anything to do with.

Banned from libraries and from Waterstones so they can stop calling it 'Book of the Year' because his last couple were good and very very trendy to like. Have they even read it?

The Earl

 

[Guest]

its funny, but not in a funny way.
tried to buy jon stewart's book in texas. almost a no go. found it strangely compelling that walmart would sell the de vinci code but not jon stewarts book... go figgah!
finally found a copy in a barnes and nobel store. read it on the plane home last night... too awesome, says i.

 

[SensualCealy]

Do people not realize that the more you ban books the more people want to read them to find out why? doh- did I say that out loud? lol

So what is Jon Stewarts book about?
C

 

[Boota]

In case anyone was wondering, fascism is alive and well and thriving in America, the so-called Land of the Free.

Belegon, I'm with you on banning the Bible. There is no other book that has caused the same amount of damage to humanity.

Not that I would actually ban any book, but if we are going to, than maybe that is the criteria that should be looked at. The history of damage and the potential for more damage to society at large.

 

[C's Button]

I am not a book banner, either, just a fan of parental involvement and age appropriate reading. But if we are getting to ban a book of choice; I would like to get rid of anything written by anyone who has ever been involved with the Christian coalition or the 700 club or any of that ilk. No Oral Roberts, no Jim and Tammy Faye. And then, all of the John Norman after Assassin of Gor. Assassin was the last book with any semblance of plot. I think that is about when he discovered that horny teenage adolescent boys (and people who never out grew that phase) will by anything in a Frazzetta(sp) cover with sex slaves inside. One of my guilty pleasures is bad, old-style "hard" science fiction. The poorly written stuff with poor scientific base and bad plot, and even worse dialog really makes me giggle and smile. But I demand at least an attempt to plot badly; not just soft core porn disguised as SF.

(This is not to say that soft core porn should be banned, though!)

 

[Colleen Thomas]

John Dunn, Paradice Lost.

I would be the hero of every kid who ever had to take an english lit course to fill a core requirement in college

 

[cheerful_deviant]

The Red Pony

Ugh!

Had to read it in High School, hated every word of it... the freakin horse dies less than half way thru for cripes sake.

Went back to it after many years and decided to give it another try, it is supposed to be a great book after all. Nope, still sucked.

 

[scheherazade_79]

Ok, I know this is just a fun thread, but I have to say that I don't think any book should be banned - not even a book that advises the banning of books. Once you start chipping away at what can or can't be written, the next move is to start chipping away at what can or can't be said, and ultimately what can or can't be thought.

So for the sake of staying true to my principles, I'd even say that if George Bush wrote an autobiography, it should be printed and distributed - and preferably stored in the comedy section of bookshopsv

 

[woodnymph_O]

i dont believe in banning them

but we do have to have age appropriate sectioning in any library.If you don't think children should read a book, introduce something along the lines of an R rating where certain ages have to have parental permission.
Just an opinion here

If I had my choice of what to ban, just out of meaness,
Books by David Eddings
(cringes while waiting for fantasy readers backlash)
I read his How to book , and was a little put off by his additude that anyone trying to write without atleast a masters in english lit. was a moron.
Nymph

 

[scheherazade_79]

As it's a game...

The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy. The bugger isn't born until about page 500. I remember having to read it at university, and every time I picked it up I fell asleep. I read it for a week, and never got further than page 6.

 

[shereads]

Do people not realize that the more you ban books the more people want to read them to find out why? doh- did I say that out loud? lol

So what is Jon Stewarts book about?
C

It's a satirical school textbook on American history. You can see how that would make some people seethe with patriotic wrath.

 

[shereads]

I'd even say that if George Bush wrote an autobiography, it should be printed and distributed -

Oh, heavens yes! If he'd agree to publish with just a minimum amount of help from a ghostwriter, I'd pay for the hardcover version and even stand in line to get his X. If you teach a child to read, him or her can pass a literacy test.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Belegon, I'm with you on banning the Bible. There is no other book that has caused the same amount of damage to humanity.

Actually, "The Origin of the Species" wins by quite a large number.

Shanglan

 

[BlackShanglan]

It's my turn, and I'm going to ban Readers' Digest Condensed Books. If you're that eager for a book to be over with, you shouldn't have been reading it to begin with.

I think I'm in love.

How's this for irony: "1984" has been banned. Somehow it seems almost fitting.

I'm for banning all self-help manuals. They are nothing but paeans to the egos of the authors, and they have the most appalling style of any genre known to man.

Shanglan

 

[BlackShanglan]

The Red Pony

Ugh!

Had to read it in High School, hated every word of it... the freakin horse dies less than half way thru for cripes sake.

Went back to it after many years and decided to give it another try, it is supposed to be a great book after all. Nope, still sucked.

And it always will.

Ye gods, how I hate Steinbeck.

The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy. The bugger isn't born until about page 500. I remember having to read it at university, and every time I picked it up I fell asleep. I read it for a week, and never got further than page 6.

It's meant to be the world's longest "shaggy dog" story (hence the "story of a cock and a bull, sir!"), but I have to agree that 500 pages is damned long to keep it up.

John Dunn, Paradice Lost.

I would be the hero of every kid who ever had to take an english lit course to fill a core requirement in college

But I, though I love you, could never forgive you.


Shanglan

 

[oggbashan]

Banning books is counterproductive. They just become more desirable.

I used to have a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf translated into English and published in London in 1941. It was published on the principle of "Know your enemy". It also demonstrated that we were fighting for freedom of expression. Some of the Fascist/Nazi propaganda books were printed by The Left Book Club in the 1930s so that their members could understand what they were against.

The Communist Manifesto of 1848 has been in print in the UK continuously throughout the 20th and 21st century.

I have a video of Leni Reifenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will' - the record of a Nazi Nuremburg Rally. It is frightening how it persuades that the Nazi Party is desirable and worthwhile. That is despite the limitations of the technology available at the time. It makes me appreciate how ordinary German people could be deluded into thinking that Hitler was Germany's saviour. The Western democracies were decades behind Goering's use of mass persuasion.

Og

 

[shereads]

Ye gods, how I hate Steinbeck.

Love Steinbeck. For everything except The Red Pony. I pulled that one off the school library shelf when I was going through a childhood phase where I only read books about animals. The "Lad" books by Albert Payson Terhune, Black Beauty, Lassie Come Home...Oh, look, here's one about a pony!

There should be a warning label on The Red Pony: Contains Animal Death Scene As Traumatic As 'Old Yeller' But You Won't See It Coming. You're Too Naive.

Ditto "The Yearling."

Why is it that so many classic novels labeled as "coming-of-age" stories involve the grisly death of a beloved pet?