I have made some pretty poor choices in books myself. That is why I said that there is no way to be sure that you will like or not like a book until you actually read it. I have learned from some of those poor reading decisions, though, and am less likely to choose similar books in the future, but there is still no way that I can be sure until I actually read a book. Insofar as sexual content goes, I have made some poor choices there too. When I was about twelve or thirteen I put forth a bit of effort to acquire some books with some very explicit sex scenes in them. I now forget how I actually came by them, but I do remember that I had to put forth some effort. I did not just find them lying around. They were the type in which the plot, insofar as there is a plot, is very secondary. The plot is really nothing more than a flimsy framework to place the sex scenes in. These are commonly called fuck books. At a later time in life when I was working as a clerk in a porn shop they were exactly the same kind of books that I was in charge of selling. I rather enjoyed the first one I read and I found it titillating. By the time I finished the second one I had pretty much lost interest and my problems with the second one, I saw in retrospect, existed in the first one too. The writing was very poor for one thing. I still remember a sentence that exemplified how poor it was. In response to a female character ordering a male character to perform a certain sex act the book said, "He obediently obeyed." I can't say that I never read another one, but I can say that I never went out of my way to read another one. Now, I think I might go out of my way to avoid one. I still make mistakes, though, or should I call them poor choices. There is a certain Bookshare book with the title of When Wizards Rule. I thought it was just a common fantasy, so I downloaded it to read. I discovered that the fantasy plot, what there was of a plot, was just barely there and the entire book was mostly descriptions of sex. If you want to look it up in the collection you will see my review on the metadata page, but it is not the review that I wrote. I gave it two stars and wrote a review about what I did not like about it. After my review was accepted I did not go directly to the metadata page to check on it, but a long time later I did take a look at it. I do believe that my review was censored. I know that I had made some explicit references to some of the explicit sex scenes and that part of my review was missing. I was left with only about the first sentence of that review. Oh well, I made the same review for Good Reads, so if you want to read the entire review then take a look at it on Good Reads. My point, however, is that we all make poor choices. When we do it helps us learn. If someone stands over you and dictates to you that the choice you are contemplating is a poor choice and that you will not be allowed to make it then you learn nothing. Sometimes that is necessary. If you are contemplating emulating superman by jumping off a cliff it would be a good idea to prevent you from doing that and explaining why it is a poor choice. In fact, it is not a bad idea to explain why other less drastic choices are poor choices too, but it is also a sign of wisdom to know where to draw the line when it comes to preventing another person from actually making the choice. When it comes to reading, that is far within the line of noninterference. There may be borderline areas though. If a student has a very important test the next day and wants to spend the time that should be used to prepare for that test by reading a Tarzan novel then it might not be a bad idea to temporarily hide the Tarzan novel until a better time. I would be aghast at the idea of hiding the Tarzan novel permanently though. That would be a case of imposing your own standards on someone else and it would be censorship. So what were the results of my own poor choices in reading material? I have already mentioned the positive effect of my learning to make better choices in the future, but the worst effect was simply that I wasted my time. The book, When Wizards Rule was largely a waste of time that I did fairly recently, but it was my time to waste and I would resent very much someone preventing me from wasting that time and when I was about thirteen years old I would have very much resented being prevented from wasting my time on the porn I read then. In fact, a large part of the reason that I read it was because it was forbidden and I resented that. Still, though, there are only so many body parts to rub together and there are only so many ways to describe their being rubbed together. After you have read all those descriptions several times it gets really boring. When I first read those kinds of books at the age of thirteen at the most, I understood the descriptions very well, but the repetition started to get to me and, indeed, I got bored with it.
On 11/11/2012 2:01 PM, Dasha Radford wrote:
Please there are books in this world that even adults with discriminating tastes don't read even if they are a intended for their age range or reading pleasure. Honestly the children can make poor choices adults can to that's Part of being human which I think every single one of us on this list is at least the last time I checked. Younger ones should be perhaps watched more closely and older ones may be as well if they showed signs of internalizing the bad parts of what they read to a certain extent. I must say at the age of 17 I myself read books that are intended for adults from book share mind most of these books are history or historical fiction And fantasy but I always make sure they don't have adult content yes markers on them. Not to say that most children would do this but any child with good taste knows that a book written with More sexual content and extreme violence then story line should not be read by them. Sometimes if I run into one that has this I may read it and plan from that day forward never to read it again. Sent from my iPhone On Nov 11, 2012, at 12:21 PM, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx> wrote:Indeed it is no different from movie ratings. If a movie is rated X then people under a certain age are simply banned from seeing it and that is censorship. Simply declaring censorship to not be censorship does not make it not censorship. If it is the parent who is making the decision for the child then declaring that not to be censorship does not make it not censorship either. There are certainly some decisions that parents or other guardians must make for children. I remember, for example, grabbing a little girl whom I was in charge of and yanking her from the street. She resisted. She stopped resisting when she saw the car that was bearing down on her, but prior to that she had not seen the car and seemed to be resisting me just because I told her to get out of the street. In that case she was making the wrong decision and my decision for her had to overrule her own decision. I might also point out that she was making the wrong decision because of a lack of information.That is, if she had seen the oncoming car she would have most likely made the same decision that I was making for her. There are other decisions that the parents need to stay out of the way of though. Reading is one of the safest activities that there are. Just stop by your local emergency room and ask how frequently they find themselves treating reading related injuries. I will bet you that the rate is very low. Children quite often have entirely different interests from their parents. Parents are likely to think that their children should have certain interests and impose those interests on the child whether the child likes it or not. There could be any number of results and one of them could well be that the child will be even more turned off from the subject than they would if it had not been imposed on them. To not allow a child to pursue one's own interests strikes me as bordering on child abuse itself. Generally, though, there is nothing to worry about anyway. Most ch ildren will not understand books meant for adults. What happens when you start reading a book that you do not understand? You get bored with it and put it down. If you are a child you will go back to the children's category and choose books that you will understand and read those. There are, however, some children who will understand books intended for adults. By banning them from choosing those books you are stifling what may turn out to be some really great potential. Again, let us concentrate on helping children make wise decisions where it really matters and get out of their way when it comes to pursuing their own interests.On 11/11/2012 3:04 AM, Doug Maples wrote:We've gone down this road before, and probably will again in the future, but I'll have to once again state the obvious.To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
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