RIMH exclusive: rare footage of the blogger reading from two of his favorite books!
Virtual Read-Out
RIMH exclusive: rare footage of the blogger reading from two of his favorite books!
Imagine A World Without Books
It would look something like this:
BBW Artwork
Some time ago I wanted a custom iPhone case. Although I never ordered it, I just couldn’t throw the artwork away; perhaps because it was the first time I semi-successfully created a fire effect in Photoshop. Enjoy!
Challenged Sentences
Want to read something for Banned Books Week but just don’t have the time? You’re in luck! Below, you’ll find ten of the most challenged books in the United States condensed (by me) into one sentence.
Irony isn’t lost on me; it wasn’t too long ago in writing about Fahrenheit 451 that I included the line:
Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume.
However, my goal is not to tell the story; rather, to whet your appetite for more.
Enjoy, fearless reader!
Ulysses (James Joyce; “explicit nature” and “promoting lust”): As an omniscient observer, spend 16 June 1904 with Leopold Bloom in Dublin.
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee; “racial slurs, profanity, and blunt dialogue about rape”): Scout, a young girl in Maycomb, Alamaba, learns from her father why racism is wrong.
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway; profanity and sex): A group of young people attempt to forget the horrors of WWI with sex, parties, and alcohol.
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut; “depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian”): A soldier in WWII, Billy Pilgrim suffers from shell-shock.
1984 (George Orwell; sexual content and violence): A totalitarian government breaks Winston Smith.
The Jungle (Upton Sinclair; socialist philosophies): Discover the horror of meatpacking in the early 1900s (and socialism, too).
James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl; “inappropriate language, encourages disobedience to parents, references to drugs and alcohol, and ‘magical elements’): A young boy flees his abusive aunts in a magical fruit with talking insects.
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald; “language and sexual references”): Jay Gatsby throws extravagant parties in an attempt to win the love of Daisy Buchanan.
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller; “offensive language”): John Yossarian deals imaginatively with Air Force bureaucracy in WWII.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain; race and social issues): Huck Finn runs away from home and rafts down the Mississippi River with escaped slave Jim.
A Word to the Unwise
A word to the unwise.
Torch every book.
Char every page.
Burn every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.– Ellen Hopkins
Remember, remember
The fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes, and I know that, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught. He can be killed and forgotten. But four hundred years later an idea can still change the world. I’ve witnessed firsthand the power of ideas. I’ve seen people kill in the name of them; and die defending them. But you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it or hold it. Ideas do not bleed. They do not feel pain. They do not love.*
Ideas are Bulletproof
*From V for Vendetta
Child of Fear – Father of Ignorance
Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.
– Laurie Halse Anderson
For years I’ve told my students, “If you don’t like to read, it’s only because you haven’t found something you like to read.” No one really hates reading; they hate being told what to read and when to read it. Then, because this mandate usually comes from a “mean teacher,” they project that hatred onto the act itself. I recall one student who – on the first day of school – declared she hated reading and would rather solve long division (she hated math, too) than read a single page of another book. By the end of the year she loved reading; all it took was a little coaching to find what she actually wanted to read.
But what happens when a book you want to read has been censored or banned? I remember looking through my school’s library in Middle School and finding all the “bad words” marked out in black sharpie (which then bled through onto the next page, effectively ruining three pages of text). What good does that do? Did they really think we couldn’t figure out what was being said? If anything, it encouraged us to find non-vandalized copies and figure out what they were hiding from us.
Those that would censor books for religious, moral, or political reasons have entirely missed the point. Now, I agree that parents should have ultimate control over what their children read, but that’s where their power ends. No one should be able to dictate what someone else reads. Doing so kills creativity, stifles healthy debate, and creates citizens incapable of rational thought. It’s not enough to say “I don’t like it because my parents don’t;” that excuse stops working around the ninth grade.
I never tell my students to read with an open mind; I tell them to read with a discerning mind. An open mind blindly accepts information; a discerning mind filters information. The problem is that censors view books the way others view television: as a babysitter. Books entertain and teach, and require a guide. Just because you want to shirk that responsibility doesn’t give you the right to violate the First Amendment.
By happy coincidence, Banned Books Week coincides with my Bill of Rights section of American Government. I have no idea how my students will react – I suspect less than half of them read voluntarily. We’ll just have to see how it goes.
Running In My Head 