Banned Books Week

Sorry for the double post today. I'd meant to post this yesterday (it's been on my calendar for months!), but I got caught up doing work instead. Who works on a Saturday, right? Apparently, me.

Anyway, I just wanted to send out a friendly little reminder that it's banned books week this week, so stop by your local library and give those banned books a little love. And, if you need a list of banned or challenged books you can stop by the list I made for the challenge I'll be hosting next year. Or, of course, you can stop by the American Library Association's site. I can't take on much extra reading these days so for me, I think I'd like to re-read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The last time I cracked that book open was in 4th Grade!

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Today I met with the public library book club for the last installment of the Banned Book Series they were putting on. This month we read Beloved by Toni Morrison. While I thought the book was beautifully written and heartbreaking to read, I could definitely see why parents would challenge this book as part of school curricula.

Even as an adult I found the mistreatment of humans to be chilling and difficult to get through. That and the mention of bestiality and a couple of scenes with sexual abuse were shocking. However, I feel the reason I was so uncomfortable with these scenes as they played out in the book was that these stories were taken from a very real history of slavery in the United States. Today it's unimaginable, but it was a reality for many people only 150 years ago in this country.

Toni Morrison got the idea for writing Beloved when she came across the true story of an escaped slave who killed her own daughter to keep her from being taken back into slavery. She wrote briefly about the woman at first, but was then encouraged to build upon that story. And from that came Beloved.

Beloved is the tale of Sethe, an escaped slave who is haunted by the memory of her baby girl. Sethe escaped while pregnant with her fourth child, and shortly after birth her owner shows up with the Sheriff to take her back. But before he is able to lay a hand on her, she gathers her four children in the barn and attempts to kill them all in an effort to save them from a life of slavery. She is only successful in killing her third child, whose tombstone reads nothing more than "Beloved" because Sethe couldn't afford to have a real inscription etched into the rock.

As the book proceeds we are taken back through time to see what led Sethe to escape. We also meet up with others from her past and we watch as her youngest daughter, the one she birthed during her escape to freedom, grow up in a world where freedom no longer exists but continues to haunt those who lived through it and the Civil War. And we also see the incarnation of Beloved come back to haunt Sethe.

This book is one I find fairly difficult to explain well. I thought it was beautifully written and it was an interesting story that kept my attention throughout. I particularly liked the time period because it shows the transition caused by the Civil War. It was a time where people saw a lot of change and for many it must have been a difficult thing to deal with. I think this book conveyed that predicament well. I also appreciated Morrison's decision to show that not all white people were cruel toward slaves during that time period.

I thought I'd share one of my favorite passages from the book as well, just so you can get a taste of the writing. This excerpt is found on page 89, just after the birth of Sethe's fourth child, Denver, which she birthed during her escape to freedom:

Spores of bluefren growing in the hollows along the riverbank float toward the water in silver-blue lines hard to see unless you are in or near them, lying right at the river's edge when the sunshots are low and drained. Often they are mistook for insects - but they are seeds in which the whole generation sleeps confident of a future. And for a moment it is easy to believe each one has one - will become all of what is contained in the spore: will live out its days as planned. This moment of certainty lasts no longer than that; longer, perhaps, than the spore itself.

This book can be difficult to understand at times. In fact, many people at the book club meeting said they didn't finish it because they found it too confusing. I, too, found it confusing at first, but if you persevere Morrison explains things more fully. And it's definitely worth the read.

Check out other book bloggers posts about this book:
Desert Rose

Speaking of Banned Books...

This is a pre-challenge announcement. I'm going to be hosting a Banned Books Challenge starting January 2009 (I don't think anyone else has one of these, but please let me know if you've heard of something like it. I don't want to step on any toes around here). The goal will be to read 12 banned books by the end of next year. I have already put together a site here, which includes a list of banned books, although I have yet to make buttons and a sign up sheet. This is really just to get you interested.

I know everybody signs up for tons of challenges at the beginning of the year so I thought if I put mine out there early then more people would have it in their minds to participate. This will be my first time hosting a challenge so I hope to get some good participation. I'll post about this again as it gets closer, I just wanted to let you all know it was going to be available. I'm super excited for it!

P.S. Don't forget to leave a comment here for a chance to win one of three books!

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita was the second book selected by my public library for their book club's Banned Books Series. I have to admit I had no idea what this book was about when I started reading it. I had read that it's one of the world's "most beautiful love stories." And I knew it was a bit illicit because of Reading Lolita in Tehran (another book I still have to read). But I had no idea it was about a pedophile who essentially kidnaps his stepdaughter and keeps her under his thumb until she's old enough and smart enough to figure out how to escape.

As I began reading this book I fully understood why some people had asked that this book be banned. After all, it kind of reads like a how-to book on pedophilia. But when the subject came up at book club, I found myself defending the book, saying that if someone read this book and thought it condoned their own behavior or it "inspired" them to do something of this sort, well they were likely to have done it anyway. I said this because I saw the reactions of the others who had read this book and all of us, whether we thought the writing was beautiful or the story interesting, were disgusted with the main character and judged him accordingly. This book isn't going to turn anybody into a pedophile who doesn't already entertain such thoughts.

The book itself is beautifully written. In the first part when Humbert Humbert is falling in love with Lolita, I was quite taken by his descriptions of her ... until I remembered that he was talking about a 12-year-old girl. I also really enjoyed the French phrases sprinkled throughout the book. I felt like each one was a little French quiz for me, especially because he offers no translation like many books do today. His descriptions of living in France and going to the Mediterranean made me think of my own time there, which is always a fun thing.

Aside from all of that though the book is really interesting and it raises a lot of questions about love and family. It also shows the inner workings (albeit fictional) of a truly deranged person and how one is able to justify what he is doing despite all evidence that it is wrong. I also thought it was quite interesting - and fitting - that Humbert Humbert often befriended other sexual deviants. I think that is probably true of that type of person in the real world.

This book drags a little in the middle and it was not an easy book to read because there are many historical and literary references throughout the text, along with the aforementioned untranslated French phrases (some Latin and German as well), so I highly recommend getting the annotated version. I didn't know there was an annotated version until I went to the book club meeting and now I feel like I need to read it all over again so I can get the inside jokes that some of the others understood better than I did.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Yesterday I went to my first public library event, which was a Banned Book Club meeting about In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. For weeks I'd been worried I'd be the only person to show up to this event, but I was pleasantly surprised that there were more than 20 people who attended, taking up all the chairs around the table. The discussion was lively and interesting and I really enjoyed it. One of the best things about deciding to take part in this group is it's forcing me to read books I would have never read otherwise (next month we're reading Lolita!).

In Cold Blood is a book I wouldn't normally have chosen because a) I'm afraid of everything and this for sure sounded like a scary topic and b) it's a true crime story, which makes it even more frightening in my mind. However, I'm glad I read it. I learned a lot about Truman Capote (sorry, wasn't one of the billions who went to see the movie about him a few years back), including that he was the first true crime author. As a journalist, I also really liked seeing how he was able to put all of his interviews together into a flowing story (and a super long one at that!).

In Cold Blood is about two criminals who think they've found a good gig when one of their inmates tells them about a farm job he used to have. The inmate tells them that the farmer spends $10,000 a week to run his business and the two assume the farmer, Mr. Clutter, keeps all that cash in a safe on his property. Once the two are released from jail, they drive 300 miles to the Clutter farm with the intentions of robbing the place and leaving no witnesses. When they get there they learn what anyone from the Clutter's town knows about the family: Mr. Clutter never has any cash on him. The locals joke that he'd write you a check for $1.50 because he never carries that much cash on him. Unfortunately, the lack of cash doesn't save the family and all 4 family members are shot in the head. It was a crime that rocked the nation in 1959 because it happened in such a small town, where people were presumably more safe than in big cities.

Capote interviews everyone in the town and the two killers after they've been caught and he paints a vivid picture of the town and these criminals. You almost begin to feel sorry for the two criminals who had such hard lives up to this point. But once they describe the murder to detectives (more than halfway through the book), you can't help but be horrified by them. Up until this point you only had a vague idea of what happened based on what police thought. Hearing it straight from the murderers was difficult because they didn't seem to understand that they'd done anything wrong. One of them, Perry Smith, even says, "I thought he was a very nice, gentle man. I thought so right up until I slit his throat."

I read this book at home alone at night and ended up not being able to sleep because it gave me the creepies. It was really well written and I recommend it, but if you're a scaredy cat like me, make sure someone is home with you so you can discuss it and get out all those worries.

This book was also reviewed by:
Nymeth at Things Mean a Lot
A bookworm's reviews
The Book Tiger

P.S. I'm still holding a giveaway for All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison. Leave a comment here before Wednesday!

For My Sacramento Readers

While I was skulking around the library last week, I discovered a couple of cool events that I really want to take part in. I thought maybe some of you would be interested as well, so here they are:

The Arden-Dimick Library (891 Watt Ave, corner of Watt and Northrop) is holding an open book club featuring banned books. The first meeting is Sunday, June 22 at 2 p.m. and features In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Admittedly, I've avoided this book for years merely for the fact that the title sounds scary. I never even bothered to look at what the book was about. I guess I'm about to finally find out. In July the book is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and in August it's Beloved by Toni Morrison. I love that they've already got it scheduled so I can plan out my reading accordingly.

In addition, the Rancho Cordova Library (9845 Folsom Blvd.) will be holding three seminars about tea. The first is "What is tea, and the history of tea" to be held Saturday, September 27 at 2 p.m. In October they will discuss "The Traditions of Tea," followed by "Tea and the Arts" in November. I know I don't make it sound too interesting here, but I'm super excited about this event. I think it'll be amazing to learn more about the traditions and cultures behind tea. Maybe I'm just a big dork though.

Anyway, if you're interested and shy about going, I'll be there so you don't have to feel awkward. I'll be a big geek with you. Awesome, right?!