Crossing the line: who gets to decide?
Choosing, banning books for ourselves and others
Before we begin…
What’s more difficult, matching a reader with a book, or setting up a friend on a blind date? Think about the last time you recommended a book to someone or to your book club, what went into your thinking? Why this book, now, for that person or group? And how was it received by the other person (or if you received the book and hated it, how did you handle it)?
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Picking a book for others: is it fun or does it cause you to break out in hives?
This week’s focus sprang from last week’s discussion. Kate O, of New Jersey found herself responsible for proposing the next reads for two different book clubs to which she belongs.
I am in two groups. One I call the Hopewell Valley liberal academics, and the other is made up of members of my Jazzercise studio. It's my turn this month to devise and post a poll for next month's reading choice for the Jazzercise group. In both groups, I enjoy this little adventure, because I have a sturdy little list of books I want to read and like combing through it for four books I think my fellow members find interesting to read and discuss.
Many of your fans are likely to be book group members, and I wonder, whether they, too, enjoy the selection process --- maybe almost as much fun as the resulting discussion. Tailoring my poll to what I know of the Jazzercise group---lively, energetic, and curious---is part of the challenge. What might your other book group participants have to say about this, and what are their sources of inspiration? - Kate O. , New Jersey
When you think about it, picking books for others is a very personal act. Your offering reflects what you know about them or think about them and it also tells them a lot about you — or at least your mood at the moment.
When my husband and I were first courting, he bought me books. Some of my favorite memories are the rainy afternoons we wandered into the Borders bookstore a half-mile from the condo and browsed. He would bring me books he’d found that “made him think of me.” One of the first was Come To Me, an early collection by Amy Bloom. I loved it and have read everything by her since.
During this period, he also bought me a blouse. It was a blousy peasant-kind of thing that was a size too small and had a lot of brown in it. I was terrified of hurting his feelings but I would never wear it. I just couldn’t. When I shared this with my aunt several months later on a family visit, she laughed and said, “Well, do you want someone who knows your shirt size or do you want someone who knows your mind?”
Since then, we’ve avoided purchases of clothing but we still bring each other books. As our minds and thinking and experiences have evolved, so do the book selections. He introduced me to his Los Angeles by sharing the Michael Connelly’s novels, to Venice with Donna Leone’s. When I wanted to know more about his mind, I picked up Crime and Punishment which he’d told me was the novel that impacted him the most as a younger person.
Lately, I’ve noticed that we each pursue our own reading paths and only rarely swap books with each other. This bears inspection and perhaps will get me thinking about how reading reflects the arc of a relationship over time.
Or not. As long as he stays away from getting me clothes, we’ll probably be fine.
A quick poll:
By the way, what is your relationship with book clubs? I’d like to explore these more fully in an upcoming newsletter. Take the following poll, if you would, and add any details in the comments that capture your experience with group reading. I’m looking forward to talking about this some more!
Book banning: the flip side of book selection
The flip side of giving a book to someone or recommending it is to deny or try to deny a book to someone who may want or need to read it. The books on a banned-book list reveal a lot about those who sought to put them there. It’s not always pretty.
Book publishers must love those who are behind the lists of restricted books at school and, increasingly, public libraries. Forbidden fruit is always more desirable. But the effort to ban books also shows something about a city or community of people that is beautiful.
Here in San Diego, a coordinated effort to take certain books off the shelves of the public library by checking them out and refusing to return them backfired spectacularly. Within days, boxes of new copies were donated to the library by people from all over the city.
Here is a photo I snapped last night as I passed The Book Catapult, one of San Diego’s stellar independent bookstores, on the way to hear stories read out loud by some of the wonderful writers of So Say We All — most of whose stories would have been “banned” by those who consider themselves arbiters of what is offensive.
You’ll find most of these and others on this year’s list of the ten most challenged books, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
Which of these have you read or plan to read? Where did it leave you when you finished the last page?
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Crossing the line to the “forbidden”: memories from Spark readers
There is a kind of initiation that happens when a reader, or a writer, discovers they are drawn to what others would deny them. Here are some of the comment from our past discussions about Forbidden Fruit and the Siren Call of The Banned Book.
Her father’s secrets
My parents had built in bookshelves and a fireplace in their bedroom. It was nice, but austere. It was only for them, not a family reading area. On the bookshelves were many books I used to look at, but the ones that struck me in that time, 1969, (I was 9)were the books about WW2 my dad kept. He never talked about the war, so seeing the books he purchased opened my eyes a bit to what he experienced. It felt like I was snooping. I know that sounds odd, but I remember that well. No books were really off limits though. I practically lived for going to the library. -
Her mother is to blame
I was probably around 10 when I found a thin hardcover book on one of our living room bookshelves. It was a long, beautiful erotic poem -- or at least that's how it struck me at such a young age. I took it to my room to read and put it on one of my own bookshelves. In no time at all my mother confronted me. Where was the book? Why did I have it? Give it back! She wanted that book back and she was furious with me. What a lasting impression that gorgeous poem left on me. Ever after, I was a pretty good writer of erotica. Erotica wasn't what I thought I was meant to write, by any means, but at the age of 14 I wrote an erotic book-length poem while sitting in classes at school and at night locked in the bathroom. The only book I have ever managed to publish, to date, is an erotic memoir! I blame my mother.... Rae Padilla Francoeur
A poem rejected as “too adult”
A bit of a reversal from "don't read that" to "don't write this" with the censorship of a poem I wrote in grade 6 for a poetry competition through (as I recall) a Junior Scholastic publication. The "too adult" across my words in my teacher's lovely cursive made no sense to me, despite the red ink. I asked and was told she wouldn't submit my entry. My mother read the poem then responded with a visit to the school, which in those days was a remarkable event…In 10th grade Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was my permission slip, and by the time a professor highlighted my sentence "He fucked the pennies out of her loafers" to note his approval on a paper I wrote, I no longer needed it. The lines of my 6th grade poem Mrs. Miller objected to: Her beautiful countenance shone untold/of her body he longed to hold -
Spark Author Jennifer Silva Redmond has launched!
Back in the early 90s, Jennifer Silva Redmond launched her marriage on the Watchfire, the sailboat she and her husband have called home for most of the years since then. This past week, she launched the memoir, Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat, that tells her story. I just received the copy I ordered. If you like memoir with a sense of adventure, this one is for you. (And Mom, if you’re reading this, your copy is in the mail!).
Here’s what one reviewer said about Honeymoon At Sea:
“If you’ve ever fantasized about living on a sailboat, read this. You will travel along with the author and her husband as the experience life and love in a paradise of their own making This beautifully written book will entice you to live life more simply, understanding that the heart of an adventure is the manner in which you navigate it.” - Lori Oliver Tierney, author of Trudge: A Midlife Crisis on the John Muir Trail.
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Ciao for now.
Gratefully,
Betsy
P.S. And now…your moment of Zen: hanging out
Frida imagined she was a sloth the other day. I think’s she’s almost got it down.
Calling for Your Contribution to “Moment of Zen”
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I enjoyed this so much, Betsy. I read it sitting beside a bookshelf that contains many books chosen for me, but also, a family history of that act. My mother’s Christmas gift girlhood copies of Little Women and Little Men, a great-great grandfather’s choices for a younger sister in the 1870’s, fill in missing pieces of “who” these ancestors were. And thank you for including my recollection of the red ink pen event!
I've never been in a book club, but find myself often asking for book suggestions from my avid-reader sisters.....