I confess that I was one of those mothers. You know the type, the one who screened everything my kids read, watched, and listened to. Even up to their mid-teens, my son and daughter (bless their hearts) had to ask permission to listen to certain music, read certain books, watch […]
This is Banned Books Week, and we here at Litstack applaud all the buzz that it’s gotten on social media. The very idea of banning books is the antithesis to an educated and progressive society, and yet some of our most cherished classics have been subject to challenge: The Grapes […]
As book lovers, we don’t really understand the purpose of censorship. We certainly don’t support an effort to ban any books because we believe that readers should be able to judge for themselves the appropriateness of a given book. But sometimes, even the best books are pulled from the shelves. […]
Okay, so…. I know my memory isn’t what it should be. But I can’t remember ever – not once – being told that I couldn’t read a particular book. That it wasn’t appropriate, or had unsuitable content. Not from a teacher, a parent, a librarian. Not when I was young, […]
Each year, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom compiles a list of the top ten most frequently challenged books in order to inform the public about censorship in libraries and schools. The ALA actively condemns censorship and works to ensure free access to information, which is certainly something […]
This week, I was planning to write on the unhappy phenomenon of banned books. However, every time I sat down to do this my thoughts went back to a year ago, when the attempt to ban a book I thought was wonderful played across the headlines of my own local […]
From Tor.com: A mother in Alamogordo, New Mexico, decided to celebrate Banned Books week a little late this year by asking her daughter’s school to pull Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere from its reading list. She objected to the fact that her daughter, a sophomore student at the town’s lone high school, was expected to […]
We love this post from THP: University student Kate Boryeskne created a compelling response to censorship with a series of paintings she’s calling “Banned Books Mugshots.” The illustrations feature characters from challenged books such as “The Scarlet Letter” and “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Check out more of Kate’s illustrations on her […]
“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed….and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.” These words […]
I remember when I first received my first Harlequin book. I was 13 years old. I don’t remember anything about the book other than it’s olive green cover, but what I do remember is the reason why my mother gave me the book and the feeling has stayed with me […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.