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Book Books: What Are You Reading?

I've been reading American Cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the American Tragedy in Afghanistan by Matt Farwell and Michael Ames.

This is one of several books I've read about Afghanistan (and not just about the American intervention). I'd love to read about Pakistan as well.
 
In rounding up some understanding of Pakistan (and the modern overlap with the affairs of Afghanistan is substantial) it can take a lot of reading before one can sort out the viewpoints, i.e. British colonial, independence and The Great Partition of 1947, the anguish of Kashmir, the 1972 war that created Bangladesh. Principals and allies and proxies have all weighed in on all of it whether as history, fiction or journalism.

It becomes clear that not only does one need a scorecard, one needs to hang onto the plain if sometimes dismaying truth of Samuel Butler's remark that "God can not alter the past, but historians can."

One of the interesting pieces I've read is a long New Yorker profile of the contemporary Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif, author of among other books the satirical marvel titled "A Case of Exploding Mangoes".

www.newyorker.com

A Pakistani Novelist Tests the Limits

Mohammed Hanif has taken on corruption, repression, and misogyny—and may also be his country’s funniest writer.
www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com

Dexter Filkins wrote the 2016 profile and it proved unputdownable, not just for what he elicited from Hanif but some background info that was useful to my project in that The New Yorker does good fact checking.

I highly recommend that piece, which glances back to the time of Zia and Bhutto and forward after the 9/11 attacks to where Pakistan struggles to regain some of the democratic vibrancy it has shown from time to time when not engaged in existential battles with India or with its own interests so fractured by ethnicity, class, sect, education and languages. Shouldn't leave out the attentions to Pakistan of the USA and China either: both sets of relationships are longstanding and have had their twists and turns, never far from considerations vis a vis India.

Speaking of US entanglements, in the USA we're used to the post-9/11 issues with Pakistan re Afghanistan, but diplomatic issues go way further back, e.g. in the time of Nixon. The book Blood Telegram by Gary Bass is instructive. Here is a review, paywall lifted.
 
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lizkat said:
In rounding up some understanding of Pakistan (and the modern overlap with the affairs of Afghanistan is substantial) it can take a lot of reading before one can sort out the viewpoints, i.e. British colonial, independence and The Great Partition of 1947, the anguish of Kashmir, the 1972 war that created Bangladesh. Principals and allies and proxies have all weighed in on all of it whether as history, fiction or journalism.

It becomes clear that not only does one need a scorecard, one needs to hang onto the plain if sometimes dismaying truth of Samuel Butler's remark that "God can not alter the past, but historians can."

One of the interesting pieces I've read is a long New Yorker profile of the contemporary Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif, author of among other books the satirical marvel titled "A Case of Exploding Mangoes".

www.newyorker.com

A Pakistani Novelist Tests the Limits

Mohammed Hanif has taken on corruption, repression, and misogyny—and may also be his country’s funniest writer.
www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com

Dexter Filkins wrote the 2016 profile and it proved unputdownable, not just for what he elicited from Hanif but some background info that was useful to my project in that The New Yorker does good fact checking.

I highly recommend that piece, which glances back to the time of Zia and Bhutto and forward after the 9/11 attacks to where Pakistan struggles to regain some of the democratic vibrancy it has shown from time to time when not engaged in existential battles with India or with its own interests so fractured by ethnicity, class, sect, education and languages. Shouldn't leave out the attentions to Pakistan of the USA and China either: both sets of relationships are longstanding and have had their twists and turns, never far from considerations vis a vis India.

Speaking of US entanglements, in the USA we're used to the post-9/11 issues with Pakistan re Afghanistan, but diplomatic issues go way further back, e.g. in the time of Nixon. The book Blood Telegram by Gary Bass is instructive. Here is a review, paywall lifted.
Click to expand...
Brilliant profile, and an absolutely extraordinarily fascinating piece.

Thanks for sharing it.
 
Couple of books by people who worked (for awhile) in the Trump administration in national security and defense. They were serving a nominally conservative administration, so not being a conservative and reading their work can be quite an exercise in tolerance of different viewpoints and policy preferences.

But everyone has come to realize that Trump is not much about ideology, and that his policy choices are often crafted to appeal to target audiences of the moment, so I was reading these to find out how some of his appointees dealt with that. In short? Well... "as best they could, a minute at a time."

HR McMaster's "At War with Ourselves"

Guy Snodgrass' "Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis"

McMaster let his differences with Mattis hang out. Some (and maybe near the end a lot) of that was apparently about differences in rank between the two generals trying to serve in the executive branch.

Mattis declined to write a book at the time, saying he felt he owed an administration "silence" upon departing. although he became less reticent later.

Snodgrass served in the Pentagon as Mattis' communications director and speechwriter, having fomerly served for several decades as a Navy pilot, instructor, squadron commander with combat experience over Iraq. His book --really about the intricacies of US national security policymaking and implementation as divided among the top tiers of executive branch agencies, Congress and the Pentagon-- filled in the behind-scenes interactions of Trump with his nat sec advisor McMaster, secretaries of state Tillerson and later Bolton, and secretary of defense Mattis. One could be tempted fairly often to say "versus" rather than "with" re the interactions. Screaming matches sometimes caused aides to close doors and turn up TV volumes...

Yeah it was a zoo. They all had reasonable credentials, some valid reference points and blind spots.... and Trump seemed to love stirring the pot to see what would happen next when he spun new policy (and new aides) on a dime and a tweet.

Anyone who thinks the USA should give Trump another shot at mixing it up on the world's chessboard as if no one else has a play is as crazy as Trump is. He sometimes nearly crazed the crew that tried to serve him and/or themselves. The levels of infighting in that administration will probably never be fully documented. All the glimpses on offer so far suggest that the fallout in both the Beltway and in international relationships could have impact on trust and collegiality for decades. And I suspect we don't know the half of it.

That former guy is not just a clown show emcee. He's a hazard to the planet's ongoing existence. He loves to create "situations" and then resolve them. The debris left behind ranges from slapstick comedy to large scale tragedy. One would be remiss not to acknowledge that the toll on personal and family life in those jobs is always phenomenal, but trying to serve that guy and one or more agendas and the Constitution, well... sometimes leaving was the only way to resolve the pressures.

For some of Trump's appointees, it didn't matter in the end whether they were fired or managed to resign. It was time to go, and the departure may have felt like gaining a medal of honor just for having survived the experience. That this has become well known is problematic for construction of a well credentialed second Trump administration. Possibly a reason so many establishment Republicans are making a public point of opposing Trump in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential election. Nothing about his VP pick or his nominal heads of transition planning is reassuring
 
lizkat said:
Couple of books by people who worked (for awhile) in the Trump administration in national security and defense. They were serving a nominally conservative administration, so not being a conservative and reading their work can be quite an exercise in tolerance of different viewpoints and policy preferences.

But everyone has come to realize that Trump is not much about ideology, and that his policy choices are often crafted to appeal to target audiences of the moment, so I was reading these to find out how some of his appointees dealt with that. In short? Well... "as best they could, a minute at a time."

HR McMaster's "At War with Ourselves"

Guy Snodgrass' "Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis"

McMaster let his differences with Mattis hang out. Some (and maybe near the end a lot) of that was apparently about differences in rank between the two generals trying to serve in the executive branch.

Mattis declined to write a book at the time, saying he felt he owed an administration "silence" upon departing. although he became less reticent later.

Snodgrass served in the Pentagon as Mattis' communications director and speechwriter, having fomerly served for several decades as a Navy pilot, instructor, squadron commander with combat experience over Iraq. His book --really about the intricacies of US national security policymaking and implementation as divided among the top tiers of executive branch agencies, Congress and the Pentagon-- filled in the behind-scenes interactions of Trump with his nat sec advisor McMaster, secretaries of state Tillerson and later Bolton, and secretary of defense Mattis. One could be tempted fairly often to say "versus" rather than "with" re the interactions. Screaming matches sometimes caused aides to close doors and turn up TV volumes...

Yeah it was a zoo. They all had reasonable credentials, some valid reference points and blind spots.... and Trump seemed to love stirring the pot to see what would happen next when he spun new policy (and new aides) on a dime and a tweet.

Anyone who thinks the USA should give Trump another shot at mixing it up on the world's chessboard as if no one else has a play is as crazy as Trump is. He sometimes nearly crazed the crew that tried to serve him and/or themselves. The levels of infighting in that administration will probably never be fully documented. All the glimpses on offer so far suggest that the fallout in both the Beltway and in international relationships could have impact on trust and collegiality for decades. And I suspect we don't know the half of it.

That former guy is not just a clown show emcee. He's a hazard to the planet's ongoing existence. He loves to create "situations" and then resolve them. The debris left behind ranges from slapstick comedy to large scale tragedy. One would be remiss not to acknowledge that the toll on personal and family life in those jobs is always phenomenal, but trying to serve that guy and one or more agendas and the Constitution, well... sometimes leaving was the only way to resolve the pressures.

For some of Trump's appointees, it didn't matter in the end whether they were fired or managed to resign. It was time to go, and the departure may have felt like gaining a medal of honor just for having survived the experience. That this has become well known is problematic for construction of a well credentialed second Trump administration. Possibly a reason so many establishment Republicans are making a public point of opposing Trump in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential election. Nothing about his VP pick or his nominal heads of transition planning is reassuring
Click to expand...
An excellent, necessary, thought-provoking, and unsettling post.
 
This year I upped my listening list.
After finishing Andy Weir's Hail Mary, then Artemis, and did a segue to Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning. The latter is interesting, a first book from the award-winning Terra Ignota series. It was the kind of book that contained so much "look at me I'm hyper educated" lines, looking up the author did not disappoint. PhD in art history from Harvard by age 25. It's a speculative fiction about a utopian world where different world powers specialize in different niche skills/activities. It had some interesting takes, from french rationalism to the sexual revolution, but I ultimately just found it unnecessarily confusing and sweating heard to be edgy (about women's penises etc...) with a lot of unnecessarily philosophical references while the plot itself felt thin. I could literally summarize it in 3 sentences (which I won't).

Terra Ignota - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org


So after the first book I decided to not read/listen more of the Terra Ignota series and go straight to non-fiction.
So I first went with Mysteries of Modern Physics: Time. It is quite a remarkable lecture series about, Time. the main take home is the existence of the "past hypothesis" that states that even though we have spacetime, the past is different from the future because it has higher entropy (disarray / chaos). We do not know why. I also learned that Einstein worked in the patent office of Switzerland, the then chronography capital of the world. Einstein's special relativity didn't come from vacuum, it came from a time where Switzerland was pushing for standardizing time measurements among the swiss cities that had their own time beforehand.

Then I went with Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution. Now that was one hella good series for non-scientists on relativity, from Galileo's relativity to Einstein's. The main take home is pretty funny. Special relativity is a double misnomer, because it states that uniformly moving systems share the same frame of reference, i.e. the rules of the universe apply the same way regardless of once place in space-time. Meaning there aren't "special places" and some rules are "absolute", i.e. nothing's special or relative, LOL. Also, general relativity is actually complicated where gravity is redefined as something that warps spacetime. It is also an interesting thing, I went to this math specialized middle school where we had 8-10 math classes a week where half of our classes were geometry classes. Turns out I was taught non-Eucledian mathematics. Literally the first class with the geometry teacher covered how parallel lines cross in infinity. They were describing a curved space(-time). Thirty years later now I know we had an Einstein quote on the wall of our classroom, LOL. At any rate, this whole thing about crossing parallels started making sense through general relativity examples: light continues traveling in the shortest, straightest path, but when heavy objects warp spacetime the shortest path isn't linear for far away observers but it is for light.

1729950508715.png

My other favorite mindfuck is how light experiences no time. Light is fully aligned with the time dimension so for light, everything is NOW. Love it.
These lectures also go over some of the basics of the Coppenhagen school quantum physics, of which apparently I had learned surprisingly extensively in chemistry and biophysics classes. It was nice though now I understand Heisenberg's uncertainty principle much deeper. The way I was taught is you can only establish a particles position OR its speed/momentum/path, but never both. I've never connected the duality of photons being waves and particles with the principle. The two are connected indeed, the universe "stores" the data as wave functions which describe the probability of finding a particle in a certain position, but the moment we detect the location if the particle, the statistical function becomes irrelevant (collapses). This is what was classically described as the collapse of the wave function. Schrödinger's cat is just a though experience that tries to demonstrate that the collapse of the wave function could be amplified into our measurable reality. Though it doesn't take into consideration that the cat may count as an "observer" so its presence would collapse the wave function anyway (my interpretation). Side note, as I've learned, Schrödinger liked young girls. VERY young girls, so it's quite fucked up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger#Sexual_abuse_allegations

And then I ventured into the THeory of Everything, lecture series by Don Lincoln. Now that's closer to my taste, he doesn't hold much back and essentially summarizes the particle zoo. We are with particles as the 1800s were with animal Taxonomy after the Origin of Species from Darwin but before the discovery of DNA. He also proposes that there might be another periodic table of quantum elements, as implied by the symmetries thus far described. I also enjoy a lot of the math described there. What's really new to me is how they predicted the possible existence of antimatter: the equations simply worked with both Positive and Negative numbers. Beautiful. The lectures also challenge a lot of conventionally accepted ideas, like the alternative theories to the Big Bang, multiverse, etc. It's much harder to summarize these lectures and he is much more technical, but I love it.

Regardless, I'd summarize my newfound fondness for quantum mechanics this way: I'd rather grind my gears trying to figure out quantum weirdness than human weirdness.
 
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A link to a poem I somehow find a meditative escape from election concerns; one of Wallace Stevens' last offerings, "Of Mere Being."

genius.com

Wallace Stevens – Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind, / Beyond the last thought, rises / In the bronze decor, / A gold-feathered bird / Sings in the palm, without human meaning, / Without human feeling
genius.com genius.com
 
Listening to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Not overtly impressed to date but nevertheless a timely and interesting topic to listen to. One of those things that I could never ever get over when it comes to historians is the lack of hypothesis testing. I come up myriads of hypotheses a day and I'm trained to give them in-depth reasoning but all is worthless if it fails testing. Historians generally don't suffer the threat of such litmus test. Halfway in i can summarize the book thusly: Homo Sapiens (Sapiens) is an asshole. Yeah. Not much news there.
 
P___X said:
Listening to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Not overtly impressed to date but nevertheless a timely and interesting topic to listen to. One of those things that I could never ever get over when it comes to historians is the lack of hypothesis testing. I come up myriads of hypotheses a day and I'm trained to give them in-depth reasoning but all is worthless if it fails testing. Historians generally don't suffer the threat of such litmus test. Halfway in i can summarize the book thusly: Homo Sapiens (Sapiens) is an asshole. Yeah. Not much news there.
Click to expand...

This made me laugh. Not because of the book (which I have not read, or anyway not yet) nor at your having chosen to read it, but because of my own tangential experience of the thing.

I did happen to go looking for some info about the book a few years ago when a couple of people I know had mentioned it with enthusiasm, and after I said something noncommittal along lines of seems like a gargantuan topic to cover in a single book, how did they approach it?, one of them said "oh I dunno but it's so informative, it's like about everything."

Unfortunately that "about everything" rang a bell with me. I had skipped past an opportunity to read all of a review of the Harari book once in The New Yorker, but did remember it having been pegged there sardonically (I assumed) as "The History of Everyone, Ever."

And OK so before bothering to stick the book on a library reserve, I decided to get more info about it. Turns out the book in review had stirred up some pushback from people who are into intelligent design, and who decided that Harari's book was trying to sell in a strictly evolutionary approach to the history of humankind that was weak on proof and long on, yada yada... and oh btw pitching atheism?

Ah, ok. Beauty in the eye of beholder.

Sounded like if I pursued my pre-reading search further, I'd run into just more of the endlessly entertaining catfight between proponents of intelligent design and of assorted theories of evolution. Great. The church and Darwin, yet again. Maybe later, eh.

I tend to put intelligent design into category of speculative fiction, which may be unfair, but life as it unfolds to us over time has looked not to be "fair" anyway, an observation that neither church nor Darwin would necessarily dispute.

Hard pass on the extended search, and so far on the book too: But... "how does it end?" 😉
 
lizkat said:
This made me laugh. Not because of the book (which I have not read, or anyway not yet) nor at your having chosen to read it, but because of my own tangential experience of the thing.

I did happen to go looking for some info about the book a few years ago when a couple of people I know had mentioned it with enthusiasm, and after I said something noncommittal along lines of seems like a gargantuan topic to cover in a single book, how did they approach it?, one of them said "oh I dunno but it's so informative, it's like about everything."

Unfortunately that "about everything" rang a bell with me. I had skipped past an opportunity to read all of a review of the Harari book once in The New Yorker, but did remember it having been pegged there sardonically (I assumed) as "The History of Everyone, Ever."

And OK so before bothering to stick the book on a library reserve, I decided to get more info about it. Turns out the book in review had stirred up some pushback from people who are into intelligent design, and who decided that Harari's book was trying to sell in a strictly evolutionary approach to the history of humankind that was weak on proof and long on, yada yada... and oh btw pitching atheism?

Ah, ok. Beauty in the eye of beholder.

Sounded like if I pursued my pre-reading search further, I'd run into just more of the endlessly entertaining catfight between proponents of intelligent design and of assorted theories of evolution. Great. The church and Darwin, yet again. Maybe later, eh.

I tend to put intelligent design into category of speculative fiction, which may be unfair, but life as it unfolds to us over time has looked not to be "fair" anyway, an observation that neither church nor Darwin would necessarily dispute.

Hard pass on the extended search, and so far on the book too: But... "how does it end?" 😉
Click to expand...
Yeah I've read those criticisms from the creationists too. I can't take those seriously either, though the criticism is valid to some extent. He's describing human evolution from an evolutionary perspective (cool), while repeatedly emphasizing that evolution is generally random and purposeless kinda like trolling creationists😀 Evolution is not random, it follows predefined rules that govern the universe and ultimately determined by quantum mechanistic principles we just don't yet understand. Should we call those principles intelligent design? We could, but the problem with the whole ID thing is they try to use it to disprove evolution, which is as logical as stating that Newtonian physics is invalid because we lack a theory for quantum gravity. Just silly.

But the issue with Harari's book is that it sorta relativizes value systems (again, cool), and human suffering, and identifies science as a historically European tool for colonization. For example he notes that science only flourished if it was used to increase wealth and power (true), that human suffering is a relatively environment-independent constant, and people in better societies (more democratic, more egalitarian, etc) aren't happier (he used bad reasoning for that), and he notes how society's organizational units went from families and small municipailities where families collaborate closely and govern and self-determine themselves to governments and individuals, and he is hinting (but not explicitly saying) that social media will upend this present organizational system. Now, considering the fact that within 2 years of publishing, the Muskerbergs who read books like this essentially took this as a justification to take over society via social media. Zuckerberg chose a more subdued approach, but musk went full on queen of universe mode with it.
 
P___X said:
Yeah I've read those criticisms from the creationists too. I can't take those seriously either, though the criticism is valid to some extent. He's describing human evolution from an evolutionary perspective (cool), while repeatedly emphasizing that evolution is generally random and purposeless kinda like trolling creationists😀 Evolution is not random, it follows predefined rules that govern the universe and ultimately determined by quantum mechanistic principles we just don't yet understand. Should we call those principles intelligent design? We could, but the problem with the whole ID thing is they try to use it to disprove evolution, which is as logical as stating that Newtonian physics is invalid because we lack a theory for quantum gravity. Just silly.

But the issue with Harari's book is that it sorta relativizes value systems (again, cool), and human suffering, and identifies science as a historically European tool for colonization. For example he notes that science only flourished if it was used to increase wealth and power (true), that human suffering is a relatively environment-independent constant, and people in better societies (more democratic, more egalitarian, etc) aren't happier (he used bad reasoning for that), and he notes how society's organizational units went from families and small municipailities where families collaborate closely and govern and self-determine themselves to governments and individuals, and he is hinting (but not explicitly saying) that social media will upend this present organizational system. Now, considering the fact that within 2 years of publishing, the Muskerbergs who read books like this essentially took this as a justification to take over society via social media. Zuckerberg chose a more subdued approach, but musk went full on queen of universe mode with it.
Click to expand...

Thanks... I wandered over to libro fm where I have some credits left and picked up the audiobook. Narrator's fine to my ears, so I just found what to do while I turn UnFinishedObjects (one-off or leftover quilt blocks) into hot-mats and pot holders for holiday gifts... 😀
 
While still regarding myself as having civic responsibilities including staying informed re current events and politics, I am in greater need lately of getting away from it all. I'm more often resorting to a coffee break over at Substack and so to a random (or focused, depending on my mood) exploration of new-to-me publishers.

Today's encounter was with "Poems Ancient and Modern." It has entries that are wonderfully written and properly cited with historical context, but what draws me especially to it is the inclusion of relevant artwork. Love the one for November 20th, "Recipe for a Salad." The poem is by Sydney Smith (1771-1845) and I confess never having heard of him before now. The recipe is a stitch and a half. The accompanying illustration took my breath away; it's Edouard Vuillard's Still Life With Salad, c. 1888 (image via the art print seller MeisterDrucke). I'm already feeling that I might end up a paid subscriber to this Substack. [yeah casting a side-eye at my budget regarding a certain NYT sub]. In the meanwhile, a coffee break to remember.

poemsancientandmodern.substack.com

Today’s Poem: Recipe for a Salad

Deem it not, thou Man of Herbs, a Fault
poemsancientandmodern.substack.com poemsancientandmodern.substack.com
 
Scepticalscribe said:
Terrific to see you here:

What - if I may enquire - were the 49 other titles banned in Tennessee?
Click to expand...


Heres the list:
  • Me, Earl & The Dying Girl by Jessee Andrews
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  • Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
  • Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony
  • 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
  • Girls on the Verge by Sharon Biggs Waller
  • There's Going to Be a Baby by John Burningham
  • Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle
  • Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  • Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
  • A Stolen Life by Jaycee Duggar
  • The Carnival of Bray by JessieAnn Foley
  • In A Glass Grimmly by Adam Gimwitz
  • Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green
  • Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
  • Locke and Key: Alpha and Omega by Joe Hill
  • Locke and Key: Clockworks by Joe Hill
  • Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill
  • Identical by Ellen Hopkins
  • Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • Attack on Titan Vol. 2 by Hajime Isayama
  • Grown by Tiffany Jackson
  • DUFF by Kody Keplinger
  • The Walking Dead: Book Ten by Robert Kirkman
  • Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
  • Monstress Vol. 2: the Blood by Marjorie Liu
  • Late Night at the Telegraph Club by Malina Lo
  • Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
  • Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas
  • The Way We Work by David Macaulay
  • Wicked by Gregory Maguire
  • Sold by Patricia Morrison
  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  • Skin by DonnaJo Napoli
  • Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez
  • Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
  • Beautiful by Amy Reed
  • Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Graphic Novel by Ransom Riggs
  • You: The Owner's Manual for Teens by Michael Roizen
  • I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez
  • In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
  • A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
  • The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
  • Blankets by Craig Thompson
  • Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
I've read these titles... I'm pretty sure the reason they were banned is because the folks who wanted them banned didn't/don't have the brain pan to handle idea that aren't the norm for them.
I live in middle TN and can say for certain that Knoxville is chock full of hillbillies so...

But banning Slaughter House 5 is beyond me.

I will say that is quite a list for me to start working on.
 
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pachyderm said:
Here the list:
  • Me, Earl & The Dying Girl by Jessee Andrews
  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  • Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
  • Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony
  • 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
  • Girls on the Verge by Sharon Biggs Waller
  • There's Going to Be a Baby by John Burningham
  • Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle
  • Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  • Just Listen by Sarah Dessen
  • A Stolen Life by Jaycee Duggar
  • The Carnival of Bray by JessieAnn Foley
  • In A Glass Grimmly by Adam Gimwitz
  • Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green
  • Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
  • Locke and Key: Alpha and Omega by Joe Hill
  • Locke and Key: Clockworks by Joe Hill
  • Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill
  • Identical by Ellen Hopkins
  • Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
  • The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
  • Attack on Titan Vol. 2 by Hajime Isayama
  • Grown by Tiffany Jackson
  • DUFF by Kody Keplinger
  • The Walking Dead: Book Ten by Robert Kirkman
  • Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
  • Monstress Vol. 2: the Blood by Marjorie Liu
  • Late Night at the Telegraph Club by Malina Lo
  • Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
  • Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas
  • The Way We Work by David Macaulay
  • Wicked by Gregory Maguire
  • Sold by Patricia Morrison
  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  • Skin by DonnaJo Napoli
  • Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez
  • Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
  • Beautiful by Amy Reed
  • Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Graphic Novel by Ransom Riggs
  • You: The Owner's Manual for Teens by Michael Roizen
  • I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sanchez
  • In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
  • A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
  • The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
  • Blankets by Craig Thompson
  • Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
I've read these titles... I'm pretty sure the reason they were banned is because the folks who wanted them banned didn't/don't have the brain pan to handle idea that aren't the norm for them.
I live in middle TN and can say for certain that Knoxville is chock full of hillbillies so...

But banning Slaughter House 5 is beyond me.

I will say that is quite a list for me to start working on.
Click to expand...
Banning The Kite Runner?

This is a beautiful, bitter-sweet and haunting book, and one that I now know to - having spent the best part of two years in Kabul, where, yes, I was taught by Afghan colleagues how to fly kites - to be (or have been) very accurate indeed.

An appalling and shocking list - and I also note (and this was pointed out in an article I had read - I actually forget the author, it may have been Caroline Criado Perez) that an interesting - as in rather large, a disproportionately large - number of the banned books were books that were written by women (which seems to be the case whenever one is faced with a selection of banned books, or works).
 
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I am currently absorbed by (and deeply immersed in) - and utterly gripped by - this is a compelling read and an exceptionally well-written and superbly researched book - an absolutely fascinating book entitled: "Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century," by Geoffrey Parker.
 
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