Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Friday, May 04, 2012

I haven't read them, they're not my thing

but censorship isn't either...but one library, at least, is pulling them from the shelves, and not because anyone asked them to:

Brevard libraries pull erotic best-seller 'Fifty Shades of Grey'

Characterised as 'mommy porn', the books are being taken out of circulation because they are too racy.
While the naughty novel doesn’t check out with local library officials, a quick look at the Brevard system’s online catalogue reveals a solid stash of some of the most erotic and enduring literature.

Copies of “The Complete Kama Sutra” are available through the Cocoa Beach, Mims/Scottsmoor, Palm Bay and Titusville branches. Also up for grabs countywide: “Fanny Hill,” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Fear of Flying,” “Tropic of Cancer” and “Lolita.”

So what makes “Fifty Shades of Grey” different?

“I think because those other books were written years ago and became classics because of the quality of the writing,” Schweinsberg said. “This is not a classic.”

That would be the library director. I do hope she at least read the thing before they banned it, rather than relying on word of mouth. Funny, they stock the Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton, which are overtly sexual and violent to the point where I stopped reading them because the story sort of became moot and it seemed that the books were written to satisfy the author's own fantasies rather than to tell a tale. And then there's her Merry Gentry books as well, where the main character has a harem of men to service her practically on every page--and these are not classics, either. Yet they remain. Did they not get the memo on them?

Lexington Public Library has many copies of Fifty Shades of Grey on its new books shelves--I count 76 in hardback, with 90 checkouts and 329 requests, and then there's 23 copies of the first e-book with 82 people on the waiting list. I'm interested to see how it plays out here, but I have faith in my library.

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