Monday Bag o’ Mail

My sister Mary and brother-in-law Dennis came to visit for a couple of days, the first of my siblings to visit since we’ve been married. I hope more visits will follow. More sisters too. All of Donna’s sisters and brothers have visited over the years. Some even lived with us for extended periods of time. […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: The Collector

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News: “Whether or not patterns like this are the result of co-ordination between would-be censors across the country is impossible to say. But there are moments, when a half-dozen or so challenges regarding race or LGBT content hit within […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: Fiction, Fantasy, YA, SF

Transatlantic Colum McCann Two Englishmen fly the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland in 1919. Fredrick Douglass, a slave turned abolition activist, tours Ireland in the mid-1800s. A maid who works for the family who hosted Douglass emigrates to the United States during the famine. A retired US senator flies back and forth between the US […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review Lookback: The Color Purple

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News: Don’t know how I managed to miss it all these years, but last night I finally caught South Park’s banned book episode, the one where the kids are at first excited to read The Catcher in the Rye, […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review Lookback: Slaughterhouse-Five

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News: Fascinating discussion about the key figures involved in comic book censorship in the 1950s. “Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published … […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: Science Fiction, Nonfiction, Young Adult, Mystery

She is about to add, “I have scars, inside me,” but she stops herself. What is a scar, Oh Toby? That would be the next question. Then she’d have to explain what a scar is. A scar is like writing on your body. It tells about something that once happened to you, such as a […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review Lookback: The Dark of the Sun

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News & Commentary: Happy news from Sierra Vista, Arizona: Dreaming in Cuban, mentioned in my last YCRT! post, will not be banned after all. Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere removed from Alamogordo NM high school after parental complaint. Cave-in message from the […]