Fiction ~ Old ~ New ~ Best Sellers #2

[MaryPage]

This is the place to talk about the works of fiction you are reading, whether they are new or old, and share your own opinions and reviews with interested readers. Every week the new bestseller lists come out brimming with enticing looking books and rave reviews. How to choose?

Discussion Leader:  Judy Laird

I never had to get permission to get a library card when I was a child.  I can remember getting one when I was still in grade school, and doing it entirely on my own.  And no one told me what I could or could not read, but then again, come to think on it, I do not believe there were any books in the Winchester, Virginia library with the huge red apple out front and the classical columns as you entered that were full of sex or dirty words.  Perhaps the librarian would have stopped my taking out anything inappropriate, but I cannot think what it might have been.  I do remember I had picked up a P.G. Wodehouse book at my aunt's when there for a visit and thought it so funny that I stocked up on them at that library.  They were way old for me, but I was allowed to borrow them.  Bottom line, I think it was a smaller, simpler world then, and the mere fact that I would show up and request a card got me to one quickly, plus there was probably not a thing that was dirty in that whole place, unless it was the National Geographic with its topless jungle natives, and shoot, we got that at HOME and no one tore it out of my hands!

[BarbStAubrey]

I am thinking the raciest thing written at the time was Payton Place and that was in 1956 - I guess there was Forever Amber published in the 1940s oh yes, and Fanny Hill from the eighteenth century and Lolita oh, and Casanova but if we can name them there were not many available to read in the average library - Erotica had its readers but they were not in public libraries - I am remembering the Librarian in Music Man was questioned for reading Balzac which says that until recent years the moral code had racy books hidden and read on the sly. Although, I am remembering some historical romance that had a bit of bodice busting - but then the sun always went down or the moon rose or the waves tumbled.

[Winchesterlady]

MaryPage -- It is a beautiful library, isn't it?  I love to go there, even if I'm not in need of a book!

[Steph]

My family always had library cards, but Iread everything from an earlyage. My Mom felt I should at least try on most stuff. Occasionally she would look at something I was taking out and say.. "hmm. read it now, but be sure to read it somewhat later again and you will discovere quite a different book.." was quite true.. I remember originally thinking Animal Farm was a book about animals of different types and how they were mean to one another. Read it again as a late teen and realized there was a whole different book involved.

[MaryPage]

Good grief, It looks so much greyer than my memory, Winchester Lady.  But that is, indeed, the library from which I got my first card.  Back in about 1940.  73 years ago!
By 1948, I was a married woman!
So where is the big red apple?  Did they take that away?
I haven't been home for about 8 years now, and will not likely ever get there again.

[pedln]

A friend recently told me about her friend, a librarian at our Catholic high school here, who had received a book challenge from a parent.  Just in time for Banned Book week. I'm not familiar with the book, but wonder if "they" still try to ban Mr & Mrs Bojo Jones and Go Ask Alice.

"The book title being challenged is My Life Next Door. It has been reviewed by many Young Adult Librarians. It's on the Young Adult Library Services Association's  Best Fiction for Young Adults List. The parent admits she hasn't read the entire book, just selected parts out of context. "

It was interesting to note the comments of the president of the Ohio State School Board who wanted to ban Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye because it was pornographic.

Bluest Eye

I agree with those who say kids will censor their own reading. JeanneP, were the high school kids causing problems in your library?

[Winchesterlady]

MaryPage -- There are several big apples around town at various businesses that were painted with scenes for an Apple Blossom contest one year.  I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember seeing one at the Library. Did you ever see the photographs and drawings showing the Library from up above?  They show that it was built to resemble an open book, with the dome being the spine of the book.  Next time I'm in town, I'll look for the apple and report back to you!

[JeanneP]

I got my first library card at age 5. Before that my mother got my books along with me.

Not many can say that they did not sneak a few "Hot Books" around the school when about 14.  I remember my elder brother who was Army came back from Egypt and I found one in his bag.  Oh! boy.  But now after what we can find right on the library shelf along with the DVD. That book would be a bore to most young people.

Read a couple of books that go into raunchy things and thats enough.  This Shades of Gray that was the Rage.  I read about 30 pages and that was enough.  Wonder what the movie will show.  Doubt I see it. Not a $8 a shot.

[BarbStAubrey]

Thank goodness I heard enough about the shades of gray not to even start - but essentially it is such a bore - when I first got the kindle there was this special historical novel for .99 around the time of James I that I thought sounded interesting - Oh lordy - between cupping this and stroking that pages and pages of this stuff from castle bedrooms to barley fields with very little story holding the thing together - I was bored out of my skull and would skip pages and pages glancing to see where they were - taught me that historical novels are not what they used to be unless they are worthy of a review. I am depending now on Good Reads more than I would like to sort through much of the fiction, best sellers or not.

[Steph]

Just not interested in Shades of Gray and dont plan on the movie either. Silly... and sad if that is your real idea of love.

[marjifay]

My mom didn't censor my reading.  Butl my brother gave me Mickey Spillane's first book I, The Jury which all the kids were reading.  I was dumb enough to leave it lying about, and mom picked it up, read it, gasped, and tossed it into the furnace.

Marj

[pedln]

Banned Book Week starts Sunday.  Last year, The Kite Runner and Jennifer Walls' The Glass Castle were among the top ten banned books of 2012.

Banned Book Week, Sept. 22 - 28


Let's celebrate our freedom to read!

[maryz]

How great that our Friends of the Library is having a book sale the same week as Banned Book Week!

[JeanneP]

Marj. So your did read it before she through it away. We were all curious . Now we think it is garbage.

[marjifay]

Yes, I'm sure my mom read my Mickey Spilane book before she destroyed it.  I read it again not long ago and it really stunk.

Marj

[ursamajor]

When I was in junior high I asked the librarian for Forever Amber.  She told my mother!  But I managed to borrow a copy which I put in the book jacket for A Campfire Girl's First Council Fire.  How things have changed.  It could go on the YP shelves now.

[CallieOK]

I read "Forever Amber" in bits and pieces when I was babysitting for one family and my charges had gone to bed. More than once, I heard the parents coming home and scurried to get it back on the shelf.

[MaryPage]

I can't believe The Kite Runner was banned!  Whyever was it banned?  My goodness gracious me, that is one of my favorite all time books!  What was in it that it was banned? 

[Steph]

Oh I loved Glass Castle.. What a wonderful book. Horrible parents, but wonderful book.Thank heaven, my Mother was into.. you want to read it,, do it, but ask me about what you dont understand.

[jane]

MaryPage....apparently challenged often, but never really banned.  Two sites with info:

http://www.shmoop.com/kite-runner/


http://muwww-new.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/books/kiterunner.asp


The Kite Runner

2013

Challenged as optional reading in the 10th grade honors class at Troy (PA) area schools because the novel depicts a rape in graphic detail and uses vulgar language.

2012

Challenged, but retained as part of Senior Advanced Placement English at the Valley High School in Jonesboro (AR). The issue arose after two patrons disapproved of a scene depicting male-on-male rape, sexual innuendo, and vulgar language, as well as religious content throughout the book. Challenged as optional reading in the tenth-grade honors class at Troy (PA) Area Schools because the novel depicts a sodomy rape in graphic detail and uses vulgar language.

2009

Challenged as appropriate study in 10th grade honors English class at Freedom HS in Morganton (NC) because the novel depicts a sodomy rape in graphic detail and uses vulgar language. Retained in the Jackson County School District (Marianna, FL) after being removed from the required reading list for one class. The school board voted to retain the book in the library by a vote of five to two. Removed from the reading list at Centennial High School in Champaign (IL) due objections from a parent whose child was assigned the book for summer reading. Challenged in Burke County schools in Morgantown (NC) by parents concerned about the violence and sexual situations portrayed in the book.

2008

Challenged as appropriate study in 10th grade honors English class at Freedom HS in Morganton (NC) because the novel depicts a sodomy rape in graphic detail and uses vulgar language.

[JeanneP]

2years  ago they Even had to take "Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn." Out of the school library's .say because of the N.. Word. Yet I have read many books this month were it was used all the way through.

[MaryPage]

You know, those challenges against The Kite Runner astonish me, because the truth is that the hero in the story travels all the way from America to his old home in Afghanistan to find his half brother's child.  A boy of, what?  Seven or nine or so;  I do not remember.  The child had been stolen by bandits of a type that actually exist and used as a dancing boy/toy boy by men who would have eventually killed him when they tired of him.  And this type of thing really goes on over there.  It is real life.  And considering what the hero of the book goes into and the people he meets while he is trying desperately to save this nephew, you would EXPECT bad language.  No one hates violence more than I.  No one hates bad language more than I.  Yet I, sensitive as I am, thought these graphic chapters realistic and my heart was comforted when the hero DID rescue the child and take him home with him to America.  So, in my estimation, if the bad parts were so quickly forgotten by THIS prude, and I do mean me, then I do not see how anyone could complain.  The book was as real as the sun coming up and going down.  Sure it was fiction, but it was fiction based upon fact.  We ALL need to know these facts and know what is going on in this world in the way of child slavery.

[BarbStAubrey]

What astounds me is they are more upset over sex between men and men and boys then they are about the stoning to death of a women buried up to her shoulders in dirt in an arena crowded with onlookers. They talk about their stomachs turning and other ways they are horrified over male sex but not a word about possible shivers over the stoning to death of a woman - that said to me they are simply bullies trying to control the environment of their children - they are not really horrified about the brutality that their children must be kept in the dark about. 

[MaryPage]

Oh Barbara, you said that SO well!

I don't think they fill the holes with dirt.  I saw a video once, honest I did, right on our television, that had been taken by phone surreptitiously by someone and spirited out of the country while the Taliban were the government of Afghanistan.  The woman, in a burka, was taken out of the back of a pickup truck and put in a hole in the stadium and then the crowd watched while men picked up stones from a pile and stoned her to death.  Then the body was pulled out of the hole and dumped on the floor of the back of the pickup.

[Steph]

There must be a special hell for people who stone or otherwise torture any humanbeings or animals.

[pedln]

There is a film about that -- The Stoning of Soraya M.  I've had it on my Netflix queue for a long time, but can't bring myself to really wanting to watch it.

Set in 1986 Iran at the start of Khomeini's reign, director Cyrus Nowrasteh's drama tells the true story of Soraya (Mozhan Marnò), whose husband plots to have her falsely accused of adultery so he can divorce her and marry a young girl. French journalist Freidoune (Jim Caviezel) is pulled into Soraya's tragic story when he meets a desperate woman named Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo).

  Netflix

[Steph]

I cannot imagine the evil that this causes. Islamic causes will never get a penny from me since I truly feel that they put women done at everyopportunity.

[MaryPage]

In the October 2013 issue of National Geographic there is a photograph of a 40 year old Afghan man sitting next to his bride.
I would title the picture:  THIS CHILD IS ABOUT TO BE RAPED!
Because, you see, she is eleven.  11.  Years old.
I think it is on Page 76 if you want to run and have a look. 
The world should scream!

[Steph]

There was a lot of pictures all over facebook. It seems it is actually the custom in Yemen.. Another country that I would never visit in a million years.

[JoanK]

The discussion of "Persuasion" starts tomorrow. come join us here:

http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?board=167.0

[Steph]

Not a fan of Jane,, but the Novemberselection sounds neat.

[MaryPage]

How disappointing not to agree with you on this, Steph, as we are so very often on the same page.  Ah well, like snowflakes we are no two of us exactly the same.

[Steph]

MaryPage... I used to be a Jane fan, but somehow in the past few years,she stopped being so important to me.. One of those things.. I am staggering along just now with Isabel Dalhousie?? No plot thus far that I can see.. Not sure why I started it. I have a note that I did not like his African series and read at least one other Isabel and was not impressed..

[mabel1015j]

Finished John Jakes "The Outlaw." It's one of the Kent family series set between the end of the Civil War and the 1890s. I like hisbooks just because he involves his characters in real events happening during the period. Sometimes it almost becomes too much, but i still enjoy them.

This one focuses on 3brothers, one is the "outlaw" in the west, sort of a Wild Bill Hickok character, another was in the Civil War -the family lived in Va during the war and therefore were designated as "rebels" - and he is angry about his experiences. He's become an expat and a painter in Paris. The third has started a pro-union newspaper -as in labor union- in the North, but eventually takes over the more mainline family paper in NYC, but continues to have progressive leanings.

 Jakes speaks about the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, which was interesting to me. I wondered if the great Phila Art Museum had been built for that, since it is near Fairmount Park where the Expo was held, but i discovered in researching that there was an Art Hall build, but the Art Museum of today was built later in the early 20th century. That's the building w/ the famous steps from the Rocky movie of the 70s.

It was a fun read.

Jean

[JeanneP]

I thought I had read "hotel at the corner ofBitter and sweet"but must have returned it unread.  So that is what I am reading now.

[marjifay]

I'm reading Stephen King's UNDER THE DOME, along with a couple other books from other authors.  I usually have about three going at the same time.  Under the Dome is about a little town that is suddenly enveloped in a force field that prevents people from leaving the town.  Keeping me turning pages--it's a biggie, over 1,000 pages.  I hear the TV mini-series made from it really stinks.  Too bad,  Altho' King must be very rich from his books and all the movies made from them.

Marj

[Steph]

I loved the Hotel at the corner of bitter and sweet. I believe the author has a new book out.. Think I saw it in Bookmarks, Not quite sure today.

[maryz]

Steph, have you gotten back to FL?

[salan]

I am currently reading Song of Willow Frost, the new book out by Jamie Ford (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet).  I loved Hotel and so far, am really enjoying Willow.
Sally

[MaryPage]

Thanks for telling us about that, Sally.  And please let us know how you liked it after you have finished reading it.  I, too, loved The Hotel On The Corner of Bitter and Sweet, and will buy this one in a heartbeat if you give a good report.