Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Harry Potter (the series) by J.K. Rowling

Submitted by Delia

Have you heard?  Reading Harry Potter turns you into a devil-worshipper!  JK Rowling’s young adult series Harry Potter is the most challenged book of the 21st century, and is one of the top ten most frequently banned books of all time.  Parents are concerned about the positive portrayal of the occult in the series and cry that the book is indoctrinating their children into Satan-worship.  But they are ignoring the real threat this series poses to our children!  If they searched for Harry Potter related websites on the internet, they would see that the series does not just glorify witchcraft, it also turns impressionable young women into pedophiles.  The Harry Potter series has inspired more fanfiction than any other book series—and since the release of movie adaptations, the amount of fanfiction increased significantly and the focus shifted from Will Harry Kill Voldemort? to Will Harry And Draco Stop Fighting And Just Have Buttsex Already?  Harry and Draco are still minors at the end of the series, which led some social networking sites to ban pornographic fan material, telling fans that they… read more »

James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Whenever I think of this book, I’m reminded of a story reading expert Jim Trelease tells in his presentations to parents.  He once read his son the first page of this book, which ends with the following paragraph:

“Then, one day, James’ mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.”

Like any good parent, Mr. Trelease anxiously looked to his young son, expecting he’d need to offer reassurance.  “No, mommy and daddy aren’t going to die.  No, animals cannot escape from the zoo.  And even if they did, rhinoceroses are herbivores.”  But his son was not even fazed.  In fact, his only question was, “Is there a picture?”

In the tradition of most great children’s literature, James and the Giant Peach features an orphaned protagonist (James) who must thwart oppressive adults (the evil Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker) to escape a dreary life and find adventure with… read more »

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Submitted by Heidi

I first read this book at least 10 years ago, and there is a funny story that starts it made so even more by the fact that it’s on this list. My 84-year old aunt read this book and then lost it. Could NOT find it. Was DESPERATE to find it again because she enjoyed it so. We searched for it for a year or two, and then after hearing her wax lyrical about it over several coffees (believe me, I knew the story by heart then) I came across this Follett book and while reading the back cover, thought YUREKA! and took it to my sweet aunt and she thus confirmed it….THIS WAS THE BOOK! Well, after all the fanfare, I set about reading the book with great enthusiasm and was not disappointed. At the time I was in my late 20’s, a die-hard mystery, detective, espionage reader, having sort of drifted out of romances through college. I mean, wouldn’t night after night being pawed by drunken college fraternity boys in dank, beer-smelling bars put you off romance too? But… read more »

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Submitted by Christine

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood has been challenged for the sexual content (some of it creepy) and references to suicide (who would want to live in this world?)

It is a dystopian novel set in Gilead, the former USA. Congress has been murdered, the constitution thrown out, by religious zealots. Women no longer have any rights, even reading is forbidden. The current government has divided women into groups. The Wives are the wives of the elite, Marthas, the maids, and Handmaids are for breeding. Pollution of the planet has caused high rates of infertility and birth defects. Young women, especially mothers, are prized for their fertility, and are held captive by elite males hoping to have children. But it’s worse to be an Unwoman, either old or infertile, who end up working in “The Colonies” disposing of bodies or toxic waste. Living in this horrifying world is Offred.

Offred is a Handmaid, it is her tale. She tells of her life before the coup, with a husband, a daughter, a mother and a career. She relives the night she was… read more »

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Submitted by Elyssa

Forget Jerry Springer.  With family issues, cross-dressing, and a touch of homoeroticism, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an engaging, first person point-of-view set during the Civil War-era.  Considered a “Great American Novel” and one of the first to use common-day vernacular, Huck Finn has been highly contested novel, resulting in its current #4 slot on the Banned Books List. 

Huck Finn is our narrator, the typical misunderstood bad boy, living with two older women.  Until his alcoholic, abusive father returns, kidnapping Huck to his place in the woods.  In order to escape his father, Huck fakes his own death, taking a raft to a nearby island.  There he meets Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave, who explains why he needs to make it North––he was going to be sold and separated from his family.  Deciding to see if the situation is as precarious as it seems, Huck goes into town––dressed as a girl.  There he finds out that his “death” has made the rounds, but also Jim and Huck’s father are suspects.  At that moment, Huck decides to help Jim become… read more »

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Submitted by Danielle (aka GaiaGrrl)

Bio: Danielle (aka GaiaGrrl) is a High School teacher in the city of Boston.  She has taught English for 7 years, during which she has encouraged her students to read as many banned books as possible, and to think independently.  She prides herself on having taught over 20 books on the banned book list.  She is also a mom-to-be, and looks forward to similarly corrupting the future youth of our society.

I first encountered the story of The Handmaid’s Tale while channel surfing by HBO.  Though the movie was not terribly good, (Aidan Quinn was still delectable, however) it teased me with glimpses of a frightening future.  When I read Atwood’s novel, I was simultaneously chilled and fascinated.  Atwood’s writing transformed my familiar Cambridge, MA landscape into a place where the a woman’s sexual identity determined her fate.

The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in the not-very-distant future in Harvard Square, Massachusetts.  Atwood paints a future where infertility plagues the majority of the world.  A women’s role is determined by her class, race, and her ability to produce children. … read more »

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Submitted by Iffygenia

Bio: Call me Iffygenia. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having few books left on my pile, and nothing particular to interest me at work, I thought I would surf about a little and dip my toe into the deep waters of the blogs.” - Moby-Dick

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: A feminist-intellectualist-romanticist-historicist-deconstructivist-takingthepiss reading

After the brainwashing, we knew our purpose; we were docile, compliant, content in our sphere.  No messy choosing of mates, no fumbling to learn an occupation. We alone had been plucked from the darkness, perfected, molded in a form of the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning’s choosing.

We took our soma, a pacifier, a crutch in our pursuit of cheerful perfection.  Our fertility was strictly regulated; we were hatched from bottles, bokanovskified, each ovum replicated with meat-cleaver precision into 96 small monuments to progress.  We were decanted in perfect proportion to society’s needs: one-ninth Alphas, eight-ninths a mixture of Betas, Gammas, and Deltas conditioned to despise books and nature, and enough khaki-garbed Epsilon Semi-Morons for factory work.

One day we became aware of Outsiders… read more »

In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

Submitted by Naomi Libicki

Recently, my husband and I bought a giant pile of used children’s books for our one-year-old son – the books we remembered most fondly from our childhoods. One of the books I picked out was In the Night Kitchen.

When our copy arrived, I found the following stamp inside the front cover: Windham Public Library: WITHDRAWN.

“What huh?” I thought. And then, “Oh yeah . . . the penis.”

In the Night Kitchen opens and closes with its protagonist in bed, wearing his pajamas. At part of the transition from this mundane scene to the surreal world where the main action of the book takes place, Mickey falls out of his clothes. He later acquires a sort of flight suit made of cake batter, but for much of the action, he is naked. And rather than using concealing props and postures, Maurice Sendak simply draws him, little-boy penis and all.

The otherworld that Mickey journeys to when he is awoken by bumps in the night is the Night Kitchen, a city with jam jars and coffee canisters for buildings.… read more »

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

Submitted by Sarah

When I first bought this book, sometime in middle school, I honestly thought it was about drugs. The back blurb on my particular edition said something like, “Even straight kids will enjoy this love story” – I thought it meant “straight” as in straight-edge.  At the time, I was a studious nerd who hung out in the school library; in this book, I was looking for a little excitement and maybe a chance to moralize over bad behavior.

Instead, I got Liza Winthrop, student body president and classic over-achiever.  Her dreams are to save her private school from closing down, and to study architecture at MIT.  However, when she meets Annie Kenyon ( while Annie was singing to the knights at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), she realizes that there’s more to life than following in her parent’s footsteps.  It’s a typical “Girl meets Girl, Girls fall in love, Girls get caught doin’ it” love story.  In the end, Liza and Annie’s relationship is an outward expression of their struggles to establish an identity within their family frameworks, while also dealing with… read more »

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Submitted by Carrie Lofty

Respected Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood departed from the style and tone of her previous works to present a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right extremists have instituted a monotheocratic government, a feminist’s nightmare. Women are strictly controlled, prevented from holding jobs, and are assigned to classes: the housekeeping Marthas, the reproductive Handmaids, and the morally fit Wives. The tale is narrated by Offred, a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells us how society came to be.

Authors who survey the future landscape and find distopias—Orwell, Huxley, and even Jack London in The Iron Heel—are harshly judged by readers who have the scorecard of history available to them, ready to make comparisons and award points for accuracy.

So here I go: While we do not live in a society as extreme as Gilead, it is looking more familiar all the time. If I had been asked to read this novel in high school during Clinton’s first term, it would have seemed terribly out of date and pessimistic, merely seven years… read more »

Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel

Submitted by Katie Dickson

Jean Auel’s first novel in the series, Clan of the Cave Bear, was recommended to me by my uncle when I was just starting high school. He gave it to me with a warning. “Um,” he said, “I started to read the rest of the books, but they got kind of romance-novel-ish.” He was clearly embarrassed. “The sequels are kind of smutty.”

Telling a young lady that the book she is about to read is not only good but contains plenty of sex is like handing a young man a Playboy. I immediately checked out each Earth’s Children novel from my local library.

Earth’s Children should be divided into two categories: Cave Bear and everything else. Cave Bear is a marvelous experiment, richly detailed and researched and endlessly fascinating. The main character, blonde Homo sapien Ayla, is adopted by a pack of Neanderthals (called Flat-Heads by humans) and must learn to survive first among the group and then on her own. Talk about female empowerment! Ayla follows the classic romance novel heroine pattern: she’s buxom, blonde, had a… read more »

Mommy Laid An Egg: Or, Where Do Babies Come From? by Babette Cole

Submitted by Aileen

I found this book when I was working as a bookseller and a customer requested it. I immediately bought a copy for myself and for any future children in my life.

Mommy Laid an Egg is a picture book designed to explain sex to children. When the parents in the book decide to tell their kids where babies come from, they spout off many of the myths we tell children. The kids in the book find these stories hysterical, and sit their parents down for a conversation about how things really work. The book stays honest and fairly simple, and explains sex within what I consider an appropriate range for younger kids (obviously, many people do not agree.) The illustrations are wonderfully whimsical, especially as Cole draws the kids drawing diagrams for their parents. The page that sticks with me most is the one that has something to do with multiple positions Mommy and Daddy can use when making a baby.

While the book doesn’t use the correct anatomical language, it is a simple explanation of how babies are made that is… read more »

Ordinary People by Judith Guest

Submitted by Stephanie Gayle

I read Ordinary People as part of my “I’m only reading novels from the 1970s” research kick. This book, thank god, did not represent a literary low in that decade. I found myself so embroiled in the family’s drama that I’d find myself muttering, “This mother is a monster!” and look up for confirmation. That’s something in short supply when you’re reading in your room alone. Ahem. 

The book is about the Jarret family (mother: Beth, father: Cal, son: Conrad) and their struggle to survive the aftermath of Conrad’s recent suicide attempt. We learn surprisingly late in the book that there was another brother, Buck, who died in a boating accident. Conrad was also in the accident and has survivor’s guilt. It’s interesting how little space is devoted to the accident or the dead brother.  We get it all as flashback and aftereffects.  I thought the author relied too much on the reader too supply the back story. But had she shoved it down my throat, I’d also complain. Picky, picky!

The mother and father enjoy a social prominence… read more »

The Goats by Brock Cole

Submitted by Jessica

There are a handful of truly beautiful books from my young adulthood, and THE GOATS by Brock Cole is one of them. I was very surprised to find this YA novel on the banned books list. I can still read this book today and feel all of the pleasure and loveliness of a wonderful book, having lost nothing in the 13 years since I first read it. It is still as sweet and solemn and kindhearted and hopeful as it was when I first opened the book and discovered a writer and a pair of protagonists who spoke so strongly to me.

The loveliness of this little novel lies in the spare, fluid writing and in the two main characters, Laura Golden and Howie Mitchell, whose friendship in the book is perfect. Laura and Howie are both miserable inmates at a summer camp while their parents have better things to do, leaving them to suffer the cruel tricks of the other campers. Laura is considered “a real dog” by the boys in the camp, and Howie is considered a wimpy geeky… read more »

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Reviewed by Erastes

“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beautious mankind is! O brave new world That has such people in’t!”

Miranda.  The Tempest Act V, Scene I:

I first read this book at least 35 years ago and at the time it was very much “science fiction” but Huxley was well ahead of his time; He took the hints of his own world (this was written in 1932) such as recreational drugs, sexual freedoms and mass manufacturing and did what good spec-fic writers do - pushed them into the future and imagined what the consequences of them would be.

Huxley’s Brave New World is a faux-Utopia (The World State) where the populace is controlled. They are grown in vitro, raised in specialist nurseries and they are both “natured and nurtured” to fit into their place in society and the work they do. Humans are graded from Alpha to Epsilon, and everyone’s happy to be the grade they are, due to successful brain washing.

I’m so glad I’m a Beta…..Alpha children wear grey They work much… read more »