Yeah, I’ve got a huge book collection. If I moved again (though after the last time’s mega stress involved in just a move of only about 2 blocks away, I would prefer not to), I’d probably try to keep them (they’re shelved in stacked milk crates, so, if nothing else, they’re relatively portable)… but if I had to move cross country, I’d take maybe a box of my favorites and go digital for the rest. As it stands now, I buy most of my books physically, but now that I’ve got a smartphone, I read some digitally too (during early morning walks to work when it’s still dark out, having a light up screen is more convenient than carrying a light around. Though I do have one of those in my jacket as well… when it gets too cold that I have to start wearing gloves, I’ve got no other choice. Not reading on the way to work? Apparently not an option for me.)
I pretty much agree, but this is a funny counterpoint:
When a book has “mature” matter, that is generally taken to be sexual – and I’ve never really gotten why people (read, adults) are so worried about kids being exposed to sexual things. Film ratings instantly become “adult” as son as there is nudity. And yet, and yet… there are books that have really violent, scarey things in them. And I can see some kids, who are good readers, being really disturbed by them.
I have few qualms about my child seeing or reading about mildly sexual material, but I do hesitate to expose him to really violent or emotionally upsetting material. Certain books about the Holocaust, for example, might be too much for my son (who is 8). Likewise many films would possess images that would give him nightmares.
I refuse to bring my kindle in the bath, so I still adore cheap used paperbacks!
I seriously considered using a projector on the bathroom walls controlled by handclaps, but I just decided to have very quick baths instead.
The topic is about choice. Letting children choose whatever the heck they want to read results in children’s books and/or whatever they are interested in.
Now if we extend that idea and have our “experts” as children…
How does one prominently-but-casually display an emblem of his or her own intellectual vanity if not a physical bookshelf full of nonfiction, great works, and other smart person things I haven’t actually read?
Nah, just kidding. My books are piled in a heap.
I didn’t mean to suggest an either/or situation with ebooks and paper. I have several friends who, in their own words, “prefer dead tree”.
Sorry about the misunderstanding
Most of you (and Judy B) are missing the boat here. It’s not just sex that is in question here. Whether or not you think kids should be allowed to read Blume novels, what about letting them read Mein Kampf or some detailed diatribe justifying white supremacy or Scientology, or proving that early humans rode dinosaurs (and palentologists are devil worshippers…) ? While I’m not saying these should be banned, I do claim that these and many other topics warrant a lot of discussion between child and parent as to what is true and what isn’t, and what is fundamentally evil.
Remember, humans, especially younger ones, are quite impressionable. It’s really difficult to undo beliefs once they’re established.
But children don’t read books without being steeped in the culture they’ve been raised in. If you’ve raised your child to be a white supremacist, they’ll read Mein Kampf very differently than one who was raised to be a mensch.
Time for the obligatory Tolkein/Rand quote, I suppose?
No reason to single out books when we don’t apply cautionary labels or rating systems to other forms of media.
When a sibling of mine was in grade seven someone in the class started reading Mein Kampf and it took off a bit, with quite a few of them reading it. As far as I know, only one of them grew up to commit murder.
All Mein Kampf needs is a good “About the Author” preface, so you know his “struggle” killed millions of people and ended in a murder/suicide when he lost.
Then you have a bit of context and can properly evaluate it as a work of fiction with an “unreliable narrator”, to say the least.
This is exactly the point. I’m quite confident that all of those kids reading Mein Kampf knew who Hitler was and what he did. The common reaction was, “How did he get elected after writing this?” The ideas in the book weren’t swaying the kids, they seemed crazy.
But the summer camp that one kid went to phoned home to tell his mother he was reading it, like it is scary to expose an 11- or 12-year-old to something Hitler wrote for fear of what, they will become Hitler? The holocaust was a nightmare, as was World War II, but it was learning about those things that made the kids curious about what a person who would orchestrate them would be like. The point wasn’t to emulate.
This is impossible to study, I would think, but I have a strong feeling that if you eliminate those that read Mein Kampf because they were already nazi-leaning, there is no particular correlation between reading Mein Kampf and become sympathetic to naziism.
(And the fact that one of those kids actually did grow up to murder-with-attempted-suicide someone makes it all the more ridiculous that we worry about shielding our kids from Mein Kampf. Worry about Romeo and Juliet, if anything.)
ORLY? You never heard of the MPAA Rating Board?
I was always an avid reader as a kid, but my preferred subject matter always caused mom a bit of embarrassment when the teachers would ask what I read at home: Mad, Cracked, and others of their ilk…
Nothing like the smell of a slightly damp used paperack… 
When I lived in the desert, I just put them on my balcony to dry. Took no time at all in the summer. 
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