Banned Books

I thought it would be a good idea to post a little more often. Sadly, my day-to-day is such a standard routine; I'm sure if someone was stalking me, I would be an easy target.  In fact, I may be such an easy target that the challenge would be gone for the stalker and the stalker would give up from pure boredom due to a lack of pursuit. Hmm...maybe not a bad thing.

Anywho, there was big literary news yesterday. J.D. Salinger died. Shockingly (? or not) I have not read anything he has written and have decided to change this. Since I already had an amazon order in the hopper, I decided to throw in Catcher and Franny and Zooey (the latter came as a recommendation of my well-read new co-worker).  Have y'all read any of these?

I also saw in the news that a Virginia public school system has decided to not teach from an unabridged (of sorts) version of The Diary of a Young Girl - the Anne Frank diary (the version in question is the "Definitive Edition"). This particular version was published on the 50th anniversary of Anne's death and apparently includes Anne's diary entries that discuss her entrance into puberty, so to speak.  So a parent complained. One parent. Now, apparently the kiddos are still reading the book, but only the edited version Anne's dad, Otto, originally released. But, uh, really? Really? Given what all those kids see on TV, movies, internet, magazines and hear on the radio...and this helicopter parent is taking down Anne Frank? A girl who died at 16 and was essentially cloistered starting at 13? Man alive, people.

Happy last weekend of January.



"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."

"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to do."

-Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger