On second thought...

I posted earlier that I didn't have much to say after a busy day.

I've had second thoughts about that, because there's something that is bothering me a lot the past few days.

In the past week, maybe week and a half, I've read not one but two books that I checked out of the library that both had the same problem - someone who checked them out before me felt the need to go through and edit the text of the books.

Now, I can sympathize with this urge. I've noticed in the past, oh, five or ten years that books, including some published by very big mainstream publishing houses, seem not to have the editing and proofreading attention that they should have. Typographical errors abound, weird grammatical constructions that I would have thought would be eliminated in proofreading have become more common, and the books just generally don't seem as professionally presented as they used to be. And as they should be, considering what the publishing houses charge for their product these days.

However, and above and beyond the fact that library books are not the property of the people reading them and the readers should therefore not write in them, whoever did the home "editing" in these two books clearly had no idea what they were doing. Not only that, they had no idea what they were doing in the very same way in both cases. If it weren't for the fact that these two books were in different subject areas - one was about the coming of age of the Baby Boomers, and the other was a memoir by singer Eric Burdon - and that they were from two different libraries in two different counties (I picked up one in a local branch and got the other through interlibrary loan), I would suspect that the same person was responsible for the markings in both books.

Whoever did it, they had issues with punctuation. There were commas crossed out, other commas added, and some commas replaced by semicolons. And none of the alterations made any grammatical sense at all. I'm not talking about the dispute over the Oxford comma here. My roommate kept laughing at me because I kept complaining this free-form editing and threatening to throw the books against the wall. In the case of the Baby Boomer book, I got so frustrated at one point that if I hadn't been close to the end of the book I probably would have just given up and returned it to the library before I finished it. It wasn't really that good a book, anyway.

I guess all of this is a long and roundabout way of saying that I don't care what you do with the books you own. I write in my own books all the time (as I think I've mentioned here before); that's my way of having a dialogue with the book and the writer. But, please, please, please...don't write in library books.

That's what God invented sticky-notes for, isn't it?

Read a Banned Book...this is the week for it

If you follow along here at all, you know that I love to read. You also might know, because I'm pretty sure I've written about it before around here, that I had the luxury of parents who did not censor what I read. Ever. Even when I was a little kid. If I wanted to read something, I was allowed to read it.

Sometimes, if it was a book that my parents thought was maybe too mature for me, they would talk with me (notice that I said "with me", not "to me") about it. But they never said, "No. You cannot read that."

I was not quite so lucky at the library when I was young. Around the time I was in about sixth through around eighth grade, there were several books that the library ladies would not let me check out so that I could read them, despite the fact that I had been checking books out of the adult (as opposed to the children's) section of the library since I was in second grade. They were acting as censors.

I suppose I could have asked my parents to check the books out for me, but I was stubborn. So, I read those books - Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, Richard Hooker's M*A*S*H, and Charles Webb's The Graduate come immediately to mind as books I originally read during that time - sitting in the library, off in a corner where one of the library ladies wouldn't find me and scold me or try to take the books away.

My experiences in trying to read those books is how I became familiar with the real-world effects of book censorship. I thought it was wrong then and I think it is wrong now to try to censor books, whether it be because the book is considered to "adult" for some kids, or because someone wants to keep even adults from reading a book because they don't agree with something in the book.

Why am I writing about this now?

Well, it's Banned Books Week, the week every year when the American Library Association and others who care about books and ideas take the time to point out to everyone that there are people out there who want to keep you from reading stuff. And it isn't always the same people. Left-wingers complain about books just about as much as right-wingers do; it's just that it is often not the same books they're complaining about. So, if you were expecting me to rail against the conservatives for being book-banners and leave the other side alone - not happening. I don't care what part of the political spectrum you're on, if you want to keep people from reading I'm not going to be happy with you.

I ran across this video, from last year's Banned Books Week, in which Bill Moyers speaks about book banning:



Let me repeat just one line from the video. "Censorship is the enemy of truth." That is so important.

And if you're going to jump up and say, "But, what about the children? We don't want them looking at hard-core porn," my answer is, well, yes. You're right. But that isn't what is being talked about here. Not at all. What Banned Books Week stands against is the people who want to ban - and sometimes burn - books because they don't agree with something about religion in the books, or something about politics, or something about social behavior, or because there is cussing in the book. And there are people like that around. They think that the Harry Potter books should be banned because "OMG! Witches and wizards!" Or they want Das Kapital out of the schools because of "all that evil Marxism". Or they don't want To Kill a Mockingbird available because it addresses the issue of racism. The list could, and does, go on and on.

Sometimes, the people who want certain books banned just complain about those books to schools and libraries and bookstores. Other times, they will go so far as to check books they object to out of the library and never take them back the object of making sure other people cannot get access to them. No, really. People do that. I'm not sure what gives them the idea that they should have some sort of say over what other people can read, but that's just me. My attitude is, my own parents didn't tell me what I could and couldn't read, why am I going to let a total stranger do so?

At any rate, there are lists of books that people have tried to ban that make the rounds this time of year. My suggestion is to find one of those lists and read one of the books on it. You'll find all kinds of books on those lists - even the Bible, sometimes.

I'm going to leave this video, also from last year's Banned Books Week celebration, here before I go for the day. In it, a number of writers and others talk about the books they've read that people have tried to ban. There's some interesting titles here, some of which you probably didn't know someone tried to keep out of other people's hands and minds:



I think I'm going to go read a book now.

In which I visit the library...

Now that I'm feeling better...and it's about time; colds are not supposed to last this long...I figured this would be a good day to refresh and recharge. So, I headed to the library.

Ordinarily, a trip to the library can fix just about anything. An hour or two browsing the shelves or reading magazines always makes me feel better.

Not today; I couldn't find anything I wanted to read.

Well, not completely. I came home with two books that look like they're going to be interesting. One is How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to be Forever, by Jack Horner and James Gorman. As near as I can tell, this one is about reverse-engineering dinosaurs from chickens. It purports to be non-fiction, and Horner is an internationally recognized expert on dinosuars. He also was scientific advisor on the three Jurassic Park films. I can't help thinking that perhaps that job didn't teach Horner that bringing the dinosaurs back might not be such a good idea. Still, it promises to be an interesting read.

The other book I checked out was Thieves of Baghdad, by Matthew Bogdanos, with William Patrick, about the effort to recover ancient artifacts stolen from the Iraq Museum during the fall of Baghdad. I've heard a bit about this effort, and I'm interested to read more about it.

So, two books that promise to be good reads. However, it took me an hour and going through fifteen or twenty possibilities to find those two.

Maybe it was my mood. Maybe it was because there were so many people in the library while I was there. Maybe I should have gone to a larger branch that has more of a selection. Maybe I'm just too damn picky.

Whatever it was, it's a good thing I found the two books, at least. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, and I can't think of many things I'd rather do on a cold, rainy day than curl up in bed and read a good book.

So, what are you reading right now? And, what is your favorite reading on a rainy day?