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

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news. YCRT! Banned Book News Local pastors petitioned to have LGBTQ-themed books removed from a Banned Books Week display at the public library in Rumford, Maine. The library, backed by patrons and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, stood its ground. Per […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: The Hate U Give

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News Another in a long line of dead white male writers whose work would make today’s college students squirm (if anyone still read him): “And where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one another of the […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. The ALA video, above, highlights student activism in the face of censorship and book-banning attempts. Here’s one activist student’s story, and it’s an inspiring one. Long as I’m throwing lists at you, here are the top 40 censored movies. Decades of […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials #3)

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic column featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News The N-word strikes again: Harper Lee and Mark Twain pulled from Minnesota classrooms. Does this mean Duluth students will be left to read lesser literature? In Missouri, “… a significant uptick in efforts to outlaw books following the 2016 […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials #2)

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic column featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News Roundup This news roundup leads off with prison book banning: The draconian New York state prison book ban I described in the previous YCRT! turns out to have been a limited test program, shut down the minute controversy erupted. […]

You Can’t Read That! Banned Book Review: The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials #1)

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic column featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News A federal judge has ruled that Arizona’s ban on ethnic studies classes (and the associated wholesale banning of books in the Tucson Unified School District) was motivated by racial discrimination, a potentially lethal blow to the ban. I say “potentially” because as […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: YA, Mystery/Thriller, Memoir, SF

Then it started to rain, so she went inside and made some coffee and did what she had never done in her life: tried the newspaper crossword. “What a stupid exercise,” said her dæmon after five minutes. “Words belong in contexts, not pegged out like biological specimens.” — Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage La Belle […]

Paul’s Book Reviews: My Top Ten for 2017

This is collection of reviews previously posted on Paul’s Thing: these are the books, old and new, that I most enjoyed reading this year. I’m about to embark on Philip Pullman’s “The Book of Dust,” a potential contender, but doubt I’ll finish it before the end of the year (also, I’m sometimes disappointed with long-delayed […]