"Your one-stop source for improper ideology and freedom seeds."
Reviews of subversive literature
It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Hitler’s Mein Kampf has an interesting history in Germany: a best-seller before WWII, it’s been banned in that country since 1945. Until last week, that is, when the copyright expired and it entered the public domain: Germans can now read it again. By […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. When this high school principal says “Parents should have the right to determine what their students are exposed to in the classrooms,” what she really means is that parents of a few students get to set school policy on what […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Textbooks confiscated from Tucson Unified School District classrooms, January 2012 Banned Books Week Commentary From Friends & Foes Can you parse this Banned Book Week letter to the editor? I can’t make heads or tails of it! An attempt to ban a […]
Have a great Banned Books Week, everyone! I don’t know about you, but I’ll be ordering a copy of The Boy Came Back — it sounds like a fun read.
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! Mini-Rant Here’s a Bookriot editorial on the overuse of scare phrases like “book banning.” Wait a minute! I use the phrase, but (I like to think) carefully and with intent. Here’s my rationale, paraphrased from earlier YCRT! posts: I find […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News Roundup With Harper Lee’s re-emergence on the literary scene, people are once again talking about her famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Predictably, some of those people think the book, and at least one high school production of […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. Well, two steps forward, one step back: in spite of the SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage, books with LGBT themes and characters are still widely challenged. Here’s an interesting article about ongoing parental challenges and “vigilante censorship” in Vermont schools. It’s not just […]