The Week That IS

This week marks the 30th Year of Banned Books Week. The event runs from September 30th - October 6th, and seeks to bring attention to the issue of literary censorship that abounds in this modern age and persists despite our self-supposed "progressive" culture.

Here is the list of the top ten challenged books for 2011, according to the ALA:

There are works of literary merit and importance on that list, and the reasons for a requested ban are quite varied. The books challenged for being unsuitable for the age group are most understandable to me - it's possible that an elementary-school age child would not be able to understand the themes presented by Sherman Alexie, or that Gossip Girl would not be considered appropriate reading for a young a middle school student. But...The Hunger Games as anti-family? Really? Whoever lodged that complaint must have been reading a much different book than I was. And Brave New World and To Kill a Mockingbird need to be read in the context of the time they were written in, and in the extent the "offensive language" and racism are presented as examples of the inherent attitudes of those time periods.

I understand that being somewhat rational and objective and not reacting based on "Won't somebody think of the children?!" emotional states is hard for some people, but there is so much in the world that can corrupt your kids, and I honestly think that books are generally speaking not one of those things. Reading into the reading into some of the reasons given for some of the challenges and requests to pull the book from school curriculum and libraries, it becomes very clear that it is very often less about influencing children and more about personal, individual morality issues. And this...this just made me wonder, again, that in such an age of information and knowledge, that people would burn a work of fiction for perceived "satanic" content.

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

• Burned in Alamagordo, NM (2001) outside Christ Community Church along with other Tolkien novels as satanic.

Look. This may rub some people the wrong way, but the Bible really does contain "satanic" content - in it, we find actual mentions of Satan and a great deal of occult elements. What would happen if a group of anti-theists gathered to burn the Bible? Would everyone just look the other way? No. Most Americans would not. A lot of Americans would be incensed. It would make the news. There would be anger, and protest, and action. But burn some classics of fantasy literature written by a contemporary and friend of Christian icon C.S. Lewis? Nothing to see folks, move along...

I have to ask, as a parent to a 10 year old boy with a very specifically defined literature comfort zone (which appears to begin and end with the Harry Potter series): How can you expect your children to learn and grow as individuals if you don't allow them to occasionally be exposed to things that present ideas and concepts that push your personal boundaries as a parent?

Are you reading anything challenged/challenging as part of Banned Books Week? I'm about to start The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Written and revised multiple times between 1928 and Bulgakov's death in 1940, this satire of Soviet bureaucracy was suppressed by the government and not published until the late 1960's. Even then, it was heavily censored. In fact, the version I'll be reading is the Mirra Ginsburg translation, which appears to be the most commonly available, but is apparently from the incomplete text and is not the best translation available.

So...yeah. Wish me luck! I'll be chronicling this reading experience to (hopefully) be published as part of a series of reviews I'm writing. When/if it actually sees the light of day, expect to be inundated with link-spam galore.

Oh, hey - according to the internet, it is also National Walk Your Dog Week! Which makes me laugh because for me, EVERY WEEK IS WALK YOUR DOG WEEK. Internet, you so crazy!

Plus! Not for nothing, but this week marks two years since I abandoned my previous blog in favor of this one. *throws confetti* *blows noisemaker* Happy Antibirthday, Other Blog!! I had a cake for you, but...uh...someone stole it. Right. I was the victim of a cake-mugging. Totally.

Oddly enough, the old blog has considerably more posts but a fraction of the views. Probably because that one was targeted to a very different audience. A small audience. Namely, pretty much one person. ::waves to M::

I used it to vent, to convey stories, and post general random musings about life, in the same way I do here. But over here I talk less about the core stress factors in my life, which are mainly my day job and my inability to fully realize all of my personal goals and aspirations. Instead, at Scenes From the Sidelines, I try to focus on things that are happening (as opposed to definitely NOT happening), and this is where I post some of my writing. Because I just put "Freelance Writer" on my LinkedIn profile, I have an actual writing thing happening - which I will cover in due time, stop being pushy! - and I figure an online portfolio with some writing samples is a good thing to have handy.

Okay, so a blog is a little outdated, I know, but I'm not ready for a full-on web presence. I have enough trouble keeping up with all of my social media presences. (Presencii?) And I like the informality of a blog. The random, sloppy, haphazard creativity of it. It's just fun.

In honor of That Other Blog, sitting there so patiently these past couple of years, I figured I'd unearth a little gem of a blog I used to browse back then. It is full of positive affirmations and nice things, and begging your pardon if it gets a little trite from time to time: Wake Up Tiger