Book-banning bollocks
Some school librarians want to ban The Higher Power of Lucky, this year’s Newbery Award winner, because it contains the word “scrotum.” Justine Larbalestier responds.
Some school librarians want to ban The Higher Power of Lucky, this year’s Newbery Award winner, because it contains the word “scrotum.” Justine Larbalestier responds.
Hilary Mantel, A.S. Byatt, Sarah Waters, and other writers take you into their workspaces. (Via.)
Tales of Iraqi translators being denied U.S. visas after endangering their lives to aid the American military remind me of a scene — and harrowing moment in history — from Tom Bissell’s The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam. South Vietnam has fallen. North Vietnamese soldiers are marching into Saigon. Yet the Soviets . . .
I spent last weekend getting sucked into Ancestry.com, in search of information about ancestors like my mom’s dad, whom she claims was married thirteen times, and his hay-hook-wielding father and infant-murderess mother.* You’d think the census takers would’ve been moved to jot a few observations about these people in the margin, but no. I did find out where my grandmother’s . . .