I Just Watched... "The Handmaid's Tale"

--by Hanje Richards

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I have been curious about The Handmaid’s Tale for years. I finally watched it this week. The movie is new to the Copper Queen Library (and if you are interested in seeing what other movies the library has recently acquired, we have a list at the Circulation Desk).
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The movie is based on the Margaret Atwood book, and the screenplay was written by Harold Pinter. I have read the book twice, so was very familiar with the story. (I strongly recommend the book, which is also available at the Copper Queen Library.)

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I was mostly interested in what they did with the movie. I found it fairly true to the book. My only hesitation in recommending it is that I am not sure how much of my understanding of the movie was based on my previous experiences with the book. So, with that caveat, I say watch it. The movie is powerful. The concepts that both the book and the movie deal with, while outrageous, are not so outrageous that they shouldn’t be considered.
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Set in a future America, The Handmaid's Tale – starring Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Duvall – tells the story of Kate. In this America, the religious right has taken over. Kate is guilty of the crime of trying to escape from the US and is sentenced to become a Handmaid. The job of a Handmaid is to bear the children of the man to whom she is assigned. After ruthless group training by Aunt Lydia in the proper way to behave, Kate is assigned as Handmaid to the Commander – but Kate is attracted to Nick, the Commander's chauffeur.
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At the same time, a resistance movement begins to challenge the regime…
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A little bit sci-fi, a little bit feminist dystopia, a little bit love story. A good movie.

Mystery Monday: James Lee Burke

--by Hanje Richards

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Because I am a huge mystery fan, "Mystery Monday" was born. Because I like to read mysteries in order, I'm going to list and talk about them in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order. And, because we started celebrating and posting about Banned Books Week on Monday, "Mystery Monday" is appearing on Tuesday (mystery solved!).

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If an author has written more than one series (and many authors have), I'll talk about different series in different posts to keep things as clear as possible. For those interested in reading some of the featured titles, I've noted at the end of each book's summary whether it's available at the Copper Queen Library or at another library in Cochise County through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

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Today's featured mystery writer is James Lee Burke (born December 5, 1936), an American author best known for his Dave Robicheaux series. He won an Edgar Award for Black Cherry Blues (1990).

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Burke was born in Houston, Texas, but spent most of his childhood on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast. He attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and University of Missouri, receiving a BA and MA from the latter. He has worked in a wide variety of industries over the years, including oil, journalism, and social care. He taught for the creative writing program at Wichita State University during the '80s, shortly before resettling in Montana.

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Burke owns homes with his wife, Pearl, in Lolo, Montana, and New Iberia, Louisiana. They have four children, including their daughter Alafair Burke, who is also a prominent crime writer. They also have four grandsons.

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Dave Robicheaux Series: Who Is Robicheaux?

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Once an officer for the New Orleans police department, Dave Robicheaux constantly breaches the ethical code over the course of just about every case he works on – seemingly without consequence – and currently pursues cases in New Iberia, Louisiana as sheriff's deputy. He is a recovering alcoholic whose demons stem from his service in the Vietnam War and his impoverished difficult childhood in rural Louisiana; his mother abandoned the family (and was later murdered) and his father died in an oil rig explosion.

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He still experiences periods of savage depression and nightmares, which are only exacerbated by the murder of his wife Anne Ballard, a social worker. Recently, he has married Bootsie, a mobster's widow and lupus sufferer, and adopted the El Salvadorian orphan Alafair (the namesake of Burke's own daughter) after he saves her from the wreckage of an airplane.

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His best friend is the violent, alcoholic ex-police officer and private investigator/bail-bondsman Cletus Purcel.
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The Neon Rain (1987) - Detective Dave Robicheaux has fought too many battles: in Vietnam, with killers and hustlers, with police brass, and the bottle. Robicheaux's haunted soul mirrors the intensity and dusky mystery of New Orleans' French Quarter – the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he becomes involved in the case of a young prostitute whose body is found in a bayou. Thrust into the world of drug lords and arms smugglers, Robicheaux must face down a subterranean criminal world and come to terms with his own bruised heart in order to survive. (Available at CQL)

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Heaven's Prisoners (1988) - Vietnam vet Dave Robicheaux has turned in his detective's badge, is winning his battle against booze, and has left New Orleans with his wife for the tranquil beauty of Louisiana's bayous. But a plane crash on the Gulf brings a young girl into his life – and with her comes a netherworld of murder, deception, and homegrown crime. Suddenly Robicheaux is confronting Bubba Rocque, a brutal hood he's known since childhood; Rocque's hungry Cajun wife; and a federal agent with more guts than sense. In a backwater world where a swagger and a gun go further than the law, Robicheaux and those he loves are caught on a tide of violence far bigger than them all. (Available through ILL)

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Black Cherry Blues (1989) - Ex-cop Dave Robicheaux: His wife had been murdered... Now they're after his little girl... From the Louisiana bayou to Montana's tribal lands, he's running from the bottle, a homicide rap, a professional killer... and the demons of his past. (Available through ILL)

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A Morning for Flamingos (1990) – Clutching the shards of his shattered life, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux has rejoined the New lberia police force. His partner is dead – slain during a condemned prisoner's bloody flight to freedom that left Robicheaux critically wounded... and reawakened the ghost of his haunted, violent past. Now he's trailing a killer into the sordid heart of the Big Easy – caught up in the lethal undercurrents of a mob double-cross and confronting his most dangerous enemy: himself (Available through ILL)

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A Stained White Radiance (1992) – Sadistic villains and interior demons plague Cajun police detective Dave Robicheaux as the murder of a local cop draws him into the painful conflicts of the Sonnier family, with whom he grew up near the bayous. Weldon Sonnier, an oil speculator perhaps involvedwith organized crime in New Orleans, is married to the sister of racist Louisiana politician Bobby Earl; Lyle Sonnier is a televangelist with a widely publicized gift of healing that antagonizes the detective, whose wife has lupus; Weldon and Lyle's sister, Drew, whom Robicheaux loved as a teenager, is New Iberia's liberal eccentric. Harshly abused as children, the Sonniers exert a strong pull on Robicheaux, whose desire to help pits him and his former New Orleans police department partner Cletus Purcel against southern Louisiana's fierce Mafia leader and his hired thugs, one of whom, Robicheauxobserves, has a face with the "moral depth and complexity of freshly poured cement." (Available at CQL)

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In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993) - Haunted by the reemergence of a forty-year-old unsolved murder, detective Dave Robicheaux must also contend with a spate of serial killings of prostitutes and local dissension about the movie company that is shooting in town. (Available through ILL)
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Dixie City Jam (1994) - Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux matches wits with neo-Nazi psychopath Will Buchalter to find a sunken German submarine, while a Mafia war explodes in New Orleans. (Available at CQL)

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Burning Angel (1995) - Helping the Fontenot family of sharecroppers from being forced away from their longtime home, detective Dave Robicheaux discovers a link between the eviction and the murder of a New Orleans fixer's girlfriend. (Available at CQL)

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Cadillac Jukebox (1996) - When former Klansman and piney-woods outcast Aaron Crown is finally imprisoned for a decades-old murder, it is to Detective Dave Robicheaux that he proclaims his innocence loudest. Crown seems to be a lightning rod for every kind of trouble that the state of Louisiana can unearth. A documentary film writer seeking to prove Crown's innocence is found murdered; a button man for the New Orleans mob accuses Robicheaux of taking a pay-off to ignore Crown. But it is when Buford LaRose – scion of an old Southern family and author of a book on the Crown case – is elected governor that Dave Robicheaux's involvement with Aaron Crown deepens to a level he can barely fathom. And it is Buford's social-climbing wife, Karyn, with whom Robicheaux had an affair years before, who proves to be his most poisonous adversary. (Available at CQL)

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Sunset Limited (1998) - The townspeople of New Iberia, Louisiana, didn't crucify Megan Flynn's father. They just didn't catch whoever pinned him to a barn wall with sixteen-penny nails. Decades later, Megan, now a world-famous photojournalist, has come back to the bayou, looking for cop Dave Robicheaux. It was Dave who found the body of labor leader Jack Flynn. The sight changed the boy, shaped him as a man. And after forty years, Robicheaux is still haunted by the bizarre unsolved slaying. Now Megan's return has stirred up the ghosts of the long-buried past, igniting a storm of violence that will rip apart lives of blacks and whites in this bayou county. And for a good cop with bad memories, hard desires, and chilling nightmares, the time has come to uncover the truth. (Available at CQL)

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Purple Cane Road (2000) - Robicheaux first hears it from a pimp eager to trade information for his life: Mae Guillory was murdered outside a New Orleans nightclub by two cops. Dave Robicheaux was just a boy when his mother ran out on him and his whiskey-driven father. Now Robicheaux is a man, still haunted by her desertion and her death. More than thirty-five years after Mae Guillory died, her son will go to any length to bring her killers to justice. And as he moves closer to what happened that long-ago night, the Louisiana cop crosses lines of color and class to find the place where secrets of his past lie buried... and where all roads lead to revenge – but only one road leads to the truth... (Available at CQL)

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Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002) - New Iberia, Louisiana, is reeling from a one-two punch of brutal rape-homicides, and drug-addicted blues singer Tee Bobby Hulin has been tagged as the prime suspect. No stranger to bucking popular opinion, police detective Dave Robicheaux senses it's not Hulin behind the atrocities. But while placating a town on fire for swift revenge, Robicheaux must face his own demons – an ultimate reckoning with Legion Guidry, a diabolical figure whose hardcore brand of violence left Robicheaux humiliated and addicted to painkillers. With his longtime friend, the boozing and womanizing Clete Purcel, Robicheaux treads among land mines of injustice, mob payoffs, and deadly secrets, all the while guessing: whom can he trust – and whom should he fear? (Available at CQL)

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Last Car to Elysian Fields (2003) - For Dave Robicheaux, there is no easy passage home. New Orleans, and the memories of his life in the Big Easy, will always haunt him. So to return there means visiting old ghosts, exposing old wounds, opening himself up to new, yet familiar, dangers. When Robicheaux, now a police officer based in the somewhat quieter Louisiana town of New Iberia, learns that an old friend, Father Jimmie Dolan, a Catholic priest always at the center of controversy, has been the victim of a particularly brutal assault, he knows he has to return to New Orleans to investigate, if only unofficially. What he doesn't realize is that in doing so he is inviting into his life – and into the lives of those around him – an ancestral evil that could destroy them all. (Available at CQL)
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Crusader's Cross (2005) - For detective Dave Robicheaux, memories – including those of a strange and violent summer from his youth – are best left alone. But a dying man's confession forces Robicheaux to resurrect a decades-old mystery with a missing woman at its heart. Her name may or may not have been Ida Durbin, and Robicheaux's half brother, Jimmie, paid a brutal price for entering her world. Now the truth will plunge Robicheaux into the manipulations of New Orleans' wealthiest family, into a complex love affair of his own, and into hot pursuit of a killer expanding his territory beyond the Big Easy at a frightening pace. (Available at CQL

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Pegasus Descending (2006) - When a nice young woman named Trish Klein blows into Louisiana passing hundred-dollar bills in local casinos, detective Dave Robicheaux senses a storm bearing down on his new life of contentment... Twenty-five years ago, lost in a drunken haze in Florida, Robicheaux was too far gone to save his friend and fellow 'Nam vet Dallas Klein, murdered in cold blood for gambling debts. Now, the arrival of Dallas' daughter opens a door locked long ago, and extracting her motives points Robicheaux to the suicide of a local "good girl" pulled into a vortex of power, sex, and death. It's Robicheaux's most personally painful case – a roller coaster of passion, surprise, and regret – and it may be his deadliest. (Available through ILL)

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The Tin Roof Blowdown (2007) – Hurricane Katrina has left the commercial district and residential neighborhoods awash with looters and predators of every stripe. The power grid of the city has been destroyed, New Orleans reduced to the level of a medieval society. There is no law, no order, nosanctuary for the infirm, the helpless, and the innocent. Bodies float in the streets and lie impaled on the branches of flooded trees. In the midst of an apocalyptical nightmare, Robicheaux must find two serial rapists, a morphine-addicted priest, and a vigilante who may be more dangerous than the criminals looting the city. (Available at CQL)

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Swan Peak (2008) - Detective Robicheaux is far from his New Iberia roots, attempting to relax in the untouched wilderness of rural Montana. He, his wife, and his buddy Clete Purcel have retreated to stay at an old friend's ranch, hoping to spend their days fishing and enjoying their distance from theharsh, gritty landscape of Louisiana post-Katrina. But the serenity is soon shattered when two college students are found brutally murdered in the hills behind where the Robicheauxs and Purcel are staying. They quickly find themselves involved in a twisted and dangerous mystery involving a wealthy, vicious oil tycoon, his deformed brother and beautiful wife, a sexually deviant minister, an escaped con and former country music star, and a vigilante Texas gunbull out for blood. At the center of the storm is Clete, who cannot shake the feeling that he is being haunted by the ghosts from his past – namely Sally Dio, the mob boss he'd sabotaged and killed years before. (Available through ILL)

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The Glass Rainbow (2010) - Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered. While the crimes have all the telltale signs of a serial killer, the death of Bernadette Latiolais, a high school honor student, doesn’t fit: she is not the kind of hapless and marginalizedvictim psychopaths usually prey upon. Robicheaux and his best friend, Clete Purcel, confront Herman Stanga, a notorious pimp and crack dealer whom both men despise. When Stanga turns up dead shortly after a fierce beating by Purcel, in front of numerous witnesses, the case takes a nasty turn, and Clete’s career and life are hanging by threads over the abyss.
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Adding to Robicheaux’s troubles is the matter of his daughter, Alafair, on leave from Stanford Law to put the finishing touches on her novel. Her literary pursuit has led her into the arms of Kermit Abelard, celebrated novelist and scion of a once prominent Louisiana family whose fortunes are slowly sinking into the corruption of Louisiana’s subculture. Abelard’s association with bestselling ex-convict author Robert Weingart, a man who uses and discards people like Kleenex, causes Robicheaux to fear that Alafair might be destroyed by the man she loves. As his daughter seems to drift away from him, he wonders if he has become a victim of his own paranoia. But as usual, Robicheaux’s instincts are proven correct and he finds himself dealing with a level of evil that is greater than any enemy he has confronted in the past. (Available through ILL)

Some Books That Have Been Banned (Titles J - Z)

The following books are a representative sampling of titles banned/challenged in the United States throughout the years and the reason(s) given for each challenge/ban.

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The Joy of Sex (1972), More Joy of Sex (1975) - by Alex Comfort. Lexington police in 1978 confiscated these sex instruction books in accordance with a new county ordinance prohibiting the display of sexually-oriented publications in places frequented by minors.
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The Last Mission (1979) - by Harry Mazer. Against the recommendation of school librarians, teachers, and administrators, the board of the Carroll Middle School removed this novel from the library for its scattered "bad words." The novel, which was named 1979's "New York Times Best Book of the Year," is based on the author's experiences in the Air Force during World War II. Mazer said, "It's like a slap in the face of veterans. The book speaks about the sacrifices of the soldiers who fought in that war." Local residents and parents petitioned and protested as well. In a final decision, the board voted 6-1 to return the book.
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The Last of the Wineby - by Mary Renault. Fifth-century B.C. Athens is the setting of the historical novel that was challenged in a high school for references to homosexuality. Not only did the complainants and their supporters revile the book, which enlivened an honors history class, but they also attempted to humiliate the teacher by calling him a "sexual predator" and accusing him of trying to "recruit" children to homosexuality. The school board supported the teacher and the novel.
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Literature in Society - In an improbable complaint about this textbook, two eminent African-American authors were the main targets of censorship. An excerpt from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was deemed offensive for its use of the "n-word," and the sexual slang in Nikki Giovanni's poetry was found unacceptable. School officials also found intolerable a reference to homosexuality elsewhere in the book and seized the texts (which include Wordsworth and other "immoralists") while 12th-grade students were reading them.
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Lolita (1955) - by Vladimir Nabokov. Although it was published in Paris, it was soon (1956) to be banned there for being obscene. An Argentinian court banned the book in 1959 and again in 1962 ruling that the book "reflected moral disintegration and reviled humanity." In 1960, the New Zealand Supreme Court also banned the book. It was later freely published in France, England, and the U.S.

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Lord of the Flies - by William Golding. The Toronto School Board banned this classic from all its schools, claiming it was racist for use of the "n-word." Even Golding's Nobel Prize in literature did not protect this author's book.
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Lysistrata - by Aristophanes. The U.S. import ban on Lysistrata was lifted in 1930. This Greek tragedy was written somewhere around 400 B.C.
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Nothing New [All Quiet] on the Western Front - by Erich Maria Remarque. Banned in Chicago and Boston, in Austria, and Czechoslovakia in 1929; in Germany in 1930; and in Italy in 1933. There was a public burning in Germany in 1933.

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Pentagon Papers (1971) - Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, this 3,000 page history of U.S. involvement in Indochina was banned from publication by court order. The New York Times was printing portions of it when the order came down. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision and Bantam proceeded to publish a paperback edition.
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Portnoy's Complaint (1969) - by Philip Roth. Several libraries and librarians throughout the U.S. were harassed and threatened for carrying this book on their shelves.
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Satanic Verses - by Salman Rushdie. The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran put a price on the head of the author for writing this book which allegedly is critical of the Islam religion. Rushdie, as a result, went into hiding for an indefinite period of time, fearing for his life.

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Sylvester and the Magic Pebble - by William Steig. In 1977, the Illinois Police Association urged librarians to remove the book, which portrays its characters as animals, and presents the police as pigs. The American Library Association reported similar complaints in 11 other states.
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The Valachi Papers (1968) - by Peter Maas. Asked by the Justice Dept. to edit the papers of Mafia leader Joseph Valachi, Maas was later sued by the Justice Dept. for trying to publish the memoirs. The reason they said was that the book would hamper law enforcement. The suit was settled and Putnam published the book in 1968.
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Things Your Father Never Taught You - by Robert Masullo. Production of this lighthearted look at male grooming was delayed by a born-again Christian art director who objected to a description of Japanese furniture arranging as "occultist."
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Waco: The Davidian Massacre - by Carol Moore. This controversial book challenges the government's version of events at Waco. A public library refused to carry the book, stating the reason was that the book was privately published.
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Who Built America? - Apple Computer has distributed Who Built America?, an acclaimed history series created for CD-ROM, as part of a free software package for schools buying its computers. When it received protests about material relating to the history of birth control, abortion, and homosexuality, Apple asked Voyager to delete the offending material. Voyager refused, and Apple suspended distribution. Following many protest letters, Apple reversed its decision and resumed distribution.

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Worlds In Collison - by Immanuel Velikovsky. In the 1950s, the scientific community tried to ban this controversial version of the origins of our solar system because it didn't comport with the "official" version of events. The publisher, MacMillan, was forced to give up publication of the book even though it was on the New York Bestsellers list at the time. If your are interested in Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision and The Saturn Myth, see David Talbot's video documentary, Remembering the End of the World.
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Women on Top - by Nancy Friday. Would-be censors got their way in their demands to remove this book from the Chestatee Public Library in Gainesville ( Hall County), Georgia. Before a final vote was taken by the library board on the fate of Women on Top, the book was borrowed and "accidentally" destroyed. The board voted not to replace it.
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(Source: adapted from "Controversial & Banned Books"); see also "Some Books That Have Been Banned (Titles A - H)"

Some Books That Have Been Banned (Titles A - H)

The following books are a representative sampling of titles banned/challenged in the United States throughout the years and the reason(s) given for each challenge/ban.
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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) - by Mark Twain. The "n-word," which appears many times in the novel, was the cause for the removal of this classic from an eighth-grade reading list. In the 1950s, the NAACP objected to the book's perceived racist tone. In 1984, the book was removed from a public high school reading list in Waukegan, Illinois, because a black alderman found the book's language offensive.
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American Heritage Dictionary (1969) - In 1978, an Eldon, Missouri library banned the dictionary because it contained 39 "objectionable" words. And, in 1987, the Anchorage School Board banned the dictionary for similar reasons, i.e., having slang definitions for words such as "bed," "knocker," and "balls."

Andersonville (1955) - by MacKinlay Kantor. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1956, this story of a Confederate prison camp during the Civil War, was viciously attacked throughout the U.S. It was banned in Amarillo, TX.

Annie on My Mind - by Nancy Garden. The Olathe, Kansas school system ordered all copies of this book removed from high school library shelves. It is a story of two women who meet and fall in love and struggle with declaring their homosexuality to family and friends.

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As I Lay Dying (1932) - by William Faulkner. In 1986, Graves County, Kentucky, the school board banned this book about a poor white family in the midst of crisis, from its high school English reading list because of 7 passages which made reference to God or abortion and used various curse words. None of the board members had actually read the book.

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Atkol Video Catalog - WIRED magazine (Feb. 1996) reported that AOL censored Atkol Video's catalog from its virtual shopping mall for carrying gay titles. AOL gave no censoring criteria when it "cut some titles and retained others."

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Banned From Public Radio: Humor, Commentary and Smart Remarks Your Government DOESN'T Want You To Hear (1991) - by Michael Graham. The title of the first book is literally true: he was banned from the South Carolina Educational Radio Network courtesy of the SC General Assembly for commentary which poked fun at their 1991 Ethics Act. Graham also has the distinction of being the only person officially fired from his job as communications director for SC Secretary of State Jim Miles by an act of the SC General Assembly.

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The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read (1995) - by Tim C. Leedom, Editor. The book traces astrological and mythical origins of modern day western religions. A Barnes & Noble bookstore in San Diego refused to stock this book because of its content.
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Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (1971) - by Mike Royko. A Ridgefield, CT school board in 1972 banned this book from the high school reading list, claiming it "dowgrades police departments."
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Catch 22 - by Joseph Heller. This book was banned and/or challenged more than once. It was banned in Srongsville, Ohio in 1972 and that decision was overturned in 1976. It was also challenged in Dallas, Texas (1974) and again in Snoqualmie, Washington (1979).
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Catcher in the Rye (1951) - by J. D. Salinger. This is a perennial favorite of censors and has been banned in the U.S. and Australia. In 1960, a Tulsa, OK teacher was fired for putting the book on the 11th grade reading list. The teacher was reinstated, but the book was permanently removed from teaching programs. A Minnesota high school administration was attacked for allowing the book in the school library.
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The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974) - by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks. The CIA obtained a court injunction against this book's publication stating the author, a former CIA employee, violated his contract which states that he cannot write about the CIA without the agency's approval. First Amendment activists opposed this ruling, "raising the question of whether a citizen can sign away his First Amendment rights." After prolonged litigation, the CIA succeeded in having 168 passages deleted.

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The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty/Beauty's Punishment/Beauty's Release - by Anne Rice (under the pseudonym, A.N. Roquelaure, written in the early 1980s). On April 28, 1996, the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch reported that following a complaint from a patron, the Columbus Metropolitan Library removed the trilogy of Rice's Sleeping Beauty books and their audio tapes after determining the books were pornographic. These same books were also removed from the Lake Lanier Regional Library system in Gwinnett County, Georgia, in 1992.

Daddy's Roommate - by Michael Willhoite. A favorite of censors, this children's book about gay parenting was the subject of a challenge in several public libraries. In an all-too-familiar request, a parent complained about references to homosexuality in material for children. Library boards voted to uphold basic library principles by retaining the book on its appropriate shelf in the children's section.

Deadly Deceits (My 25 Years in the CIA) (1983) - by Ralph McGheehee. The CIA delayed the publication of this book for three years, objecting to 397 passages, even though much of what the author wrote about was already public knowledge.

The Decameron - by Giovanni Boccacio (1313-1375). In Cincinnati, an "expurgated" version of Boccacio's Decameron was confiscated in 1922. In 1926, there was an import ban of the book by the Treasury Department. In 1927, U.S. Customs removed parts of the text from the "Ashendene edition" and shipped the mutilated copy back to the British publisher in London. In 1932, the import ban was lifted in Minnesota. In 1934, the New England Watch and Ward Society still banned the book. In 1954, it was still on the black list of the "National Organization of Decent Literature."

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Dictionary of American Slang - by T.Y. Crowell, publisher. Max Rafferty, California superintendent of public instruction in 1963, and his supporters found over 150 "dirty" passages in the book.

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Don't Call Me Brother - by Austin Miles. In 1992, former Christian fundamentalist minister, Austin Miles, was sued; charges were that his book, Don't Call Me Brother, was "...a vitriolic attack upon organized Christianity." The $4 million lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court also screamed "libel" and "slander." After a lengthy and costly process, the court ruled that the book was not defamatory.
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The Drowning of Stephen Jones - by Bette Greene/The Education of Harriet Hatfield - by May Sarton/Maurice - by E. M. Forster. All three of these books, which treat homosexuality in various ways, were removed from the Mascenic, NH regional high school. The novels' purchase was financed by a grant that teacher Penny Culliton received and which was approved by the school superintendent and principal. However, shortly after a local newspaper reported that Culliton was involved with an LGBT support group for young people, the books were found unsuitable and were banned. Maurice and The Education of Harriet Hatfield were seized from the students while they were reading the novels in class. Personal attacks on the teacher and demands for her dismissal were so vehement that she was fired and then reinistated after a one-year suspension.

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Fahrenheit 451 - by Ray Bradbury. This book about censorship and those who ban books for fear of creating too much individualism and independent thought was, ironically, removed in late 1998 from the required reading list of the West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi. A parent complained of the use of the words "God damn" in the book. Subsequently, the superintendent instructed the the teacher to remove the book from the required reading list.

Families - by Meredith Tax. A young children's book that creatively describes different family structures was removed by the Fairfax County school board after having been under attack for a long time, during which many individuals and organizations rose to its defense. It made no difference that Families was praised by the board's own review committees.

Flowers in the Attic - by V.C. Andrews. Richmond High School in Rhode Island removed the book because it contained "offensive passages..." and it was removed from the Oconee County school libraries in 1994 due to "filthiness" when the county's board of education decided to remove all school curriculum materials and library books containing any and all "profanity" and "pornography," both concepts ill-defined. The tremendous public outcry made the board backtrack and resolve to review its selection policy. However, after this conciliatory decision, most of the books in Andrews's popular Flowers in the Attic series were removed from the high-school library for "pornographic" content.

Forever - by Judy Blume. Forever censored, this wildly popular teen novel was attacked once again for its frank treatment of adolescent sexuality and was removed from an eighth-grade optional reading list. In Rib Lake, Wisconsin, a school district principal had the book removed from the library after confiscating a copy from a student in the lunchroom, finding "graphic descriptions of sex acts."

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Freedom and Order - by Henry Steele Commager. The U.S. Information Agency had this book banned from its overseas libraries because of its condemnation of American policies in Vietnam.

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From Here to Eternity (1951) - by James Jones. This book was censored in 1951 in Holyoke, Springfield, Massachusetts and in 1953 -- two years after it won the National Book Award -- it was banned from display in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was blacklisted by the National Organization of Decent Literature in 1954 and banned from the mails in 1955 by the New York City post office four years after it had become a national bestseller.

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The Glass Teat (1970) - by Harlan Ellison. This is a collection of essays which appeared as columns in the Los Angeles Free Press and Rolling Stone during the 1960s. They were critical essay on the subject of television broadcasting; and essays critical of the President and Vice-President. The publisher, Ace Pub. Corp. consequently recalled the book and had it removed from bookstores. Years later, it was later re-released.
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Grapes of Wrath (1939) - by John Steinbeck. Several months after the book's publication, a St. Louis library ordered 3 copies to be burned for the "vulgar" words used by its characters. It was also banned in Kansas City and in Oklahoma.

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.Howl - by Allen Ginsberg. Officials of the Cold War era saw only willful destruction of American values in a poet's grief over suffocating 1950s convention.
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(Source: adapted from "Controversial & Banned Books"); see also "Some Books That Have Been Banned (Titles J - Z)"

America's First Banned Book

Banned books are books to which free access is not permitted. The practice of banning books is a form of censorship, and often has political, religious or moral motivations.

Bans on books can be enacted at the national or subnational level, and can carry legal penalties for their infraction. Books may also be challenged at a local, community level. As a result, books can be removed from schools or libraries, although these bans do not extend outside of that area. Similarly, religions may issue lists of banned books – a historical example being the Roman Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum – which do not always carry legal force.

The FIRST book banned in America was New English Canaan by Thomas Morton -- the New England colonies' first "criminal exile" and America's First Poet in English. Morton was an educated Renaissance man who grew up in England's wild West Country under Queen Elizabeth and came to America in 1624 -- prospering in every way because he loved it here, as opposed to his Pilgrim neighbors 40 miles away who were starving in a "howling wilderness."

How did this vigorous Elizabethan, born to the "outdoors culture" of England's West Country, become America's most controversial early colonist? What classical and country traditions inspired Morton's notorious New English Canaan -- a perceptive, witty, and often slapstick portrait, in prose and poetry, of Native New England peoples, land, creatures, and colonists?

Canaan (1637) is three books: 10 chapters of closely observed Native American life (they made Morton's success possible); 10 chapters on the wonders of American nature; and the final third a satiric attack on the Pilgrims and Boston Puritans, warning that if their "martialist" approach to America were followed, the continent would become a Christian labor camp. He calls Myles Standish "Captain Shrimp" and won his lawsuit against "New Israel" for having burned him out of house and home.

No wonder Morton and his book were banned in Puritan America -- they were sympathetic toward Native Americans, admiring of nature, and contemptuous toward the self-sanctified!

(Source: excerpted from Wikipedia's "List of Books Banned by Governments")

Last Year's Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books

--by Nora Dunne / September 23, 2010 (CSMonitor.com)

In a decade marked by reality TV and free-for-all social networking, the concept of banning books may seem outdated – even archaic. Sexual explicitness, language that is considered obscene, and homosexuality no longer have the power to shock that they once did. As Banned Books Week 2010 kicks off (Sept. 25−Oct. 2), however, it is clear that for many readers all of the above remain highly objectionable.

Fifty-eight years after its publication, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” still makes the American Library Association’s list of the top 10 most frequently challenged books of 2009. So do classics “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Color Purple” and “The Chocolate War.”

All four novels are considered, among other reasons, “unsuited to age group” by challengers. In 2001, a school board member in Summerville, S.C., removed “The Catcher in the Rye” because it “is a filthy, filthy book.” Last year it was again challenged at a Missoula, Mont., high school. Also in 2009, secondary school classrooms in Brampton, Ontario, removed “To Kill a Mockingbird” from their shelves after a parent objected to language used in the novel.

Likewise “unsuited” are four young adult reads: No. 1 on the list is Lauren Myracle’s “Internet Girls” series (“ttyl,” “ttfn” and “l8r, g8r”), followed by “The Perks of Being A Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, and “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Round Things” by Carolyn Mackler.

Challengers deemed Jodi Picoult’s “My Sister’s Keeper” ban-able for a plethora of reasons: sexism, homosexuality, sexual explicitness, offensive language, religious viewpoint, drugs, suicide, violence, and of course, for being unsuited for its age group.

A 32-page picture book “And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, about a pair of male penguins in a zoo who nurture an egg together, is second on the list. Though not judged unsuited to its age group (4-to-8 years), the book, which was based on a true story, was challenged for its portrayal of homosexuality.

The ALA compiles the top-challenged list every year to educate the public on censorship. (The 2010 list will not be complete till next year.) They define a challenge as “a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.” The majority of books challenged do not end up being removed from the library or school.

In total, there were 460 challenges reported to the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom in 2009, 410 of them books. The rest are videos, speeches, magazines, and other forms of media. The organization estimates that only 1 out of every 5 or 6 challenges is actually reported, so the actual number of challenges is probably much larger than 460.

Interestingly, more th[a]n half of the challenges for the year came from two states: Pennsylvania and Texas. In the two decades the ALA has been keeping track, parents have been responsible for 48 percent of all challenges. The most common reason: sexual explicitness (33 percent), followed by offensive language (26 percent), and material “unsuited to age group” (21 percent).

While efforts to ban books are decreasing overall – between 2004 and 2009 the ALA received 21 percent fewer reports than a decade before – Banned Books Week highlights that controversies over public access to books and First Amendment rights are alive and well throughout the United States.

Source: Banned Books Week 2010: Which books drew the most fire last year?
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Out of 460 challenges as reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom last year, the top ten most frequently challenged were:

1. “TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs

2. “And Tango Makes Three” by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson Reasons: Homosexuality

3. “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Anti-Family, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide

4. “To Kill A Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee Reasons: Racism, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

6. “Catcher in the Rye,” by J.D. Salinger Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

7. “My Sister’s Keeper,” by Jodi Picoult Reasons: Sexism, Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Drugs, Suicide, Violence

8. “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things,” by Carolyn Mackler Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

9. “The Color Purple,” Alice Walker Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

10. “The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier Reasons: Nudity, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Source: Top ten most frequently challenged books of 2009

Friday Fiction: Philippa Gregory

--by Hanje Richards
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Philippa Gregory was born in Kenya. When she was two years old, her family moved to England. She was a "rebel" at school, but eventually decided to go to university and was educated at the University of Sussex. She worked in BBC radio for two years before attending the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her doctorate in 18th-century literature. She has taught at the University of Durham, University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.
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Her academic background has given her a knowledge of and enthusiasm for many periods of history but particularly for the Tudor period and the 16th century. Her research in 18th-century literature led her to write the bestselling Lacey trilogy Wideacre, which is a gripping story about the love of land and incest, The Favored Child and Meridon.

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Philippa Gregory now lives on a 100-acre farm in the North York Moors national park, near Stokesley, with her husband, children and stepchildren (six in all). Her interests include riding, walking, skiing, and gardening..

Constant Princess - Katherine of Aragon. Known to history as the Queen who was pushed off her throne by Anne Boleyn, here is a Katherine the world has forgotten: the enchanting princess that all England loved. First married to Henry VIII's older brother, Arthur, Katherine's passion turns their arranged marriage into a love match; but when Arthur dies, the merciless English court and her ambitious parents -- the crusading King and Queen of Spain -- have to find a new role for the widow. Ultimately, it is Katherine herself who takes control of her own life by telling the most audacious lie in English history, leading her to the very pinnacle of power in England.

Set in the rich beauty of Moorish Spain and the glamor of the Tudor court, The Constant Princess presents a woman whose constancy helps her endure betrayal, poverty and despair, until the inevitable moment when she steps into the role she has prepared for all her life: Henry VIII's Queen, Regent, and commander of the English army in their greatest victory against Scotland. .

Favored Child - The Wideacre estate is bankrupt. The villagers are living in poverty and Wideacre Hall is a smoke-blackened ruin. But, in the Dower House, two children are being raised in protected innocence. Equal claimants to the estate, rivals for the love of the village, they are tied by a secret childhood betrothal but forbidden to marry. Only one can be the favored child. Only one can inherit the magical understanding between the land and the Lacey family that can make the Sussex village grow green again. Only one can be Beatrice Lacey's true heir. .

Little House - A contemporary psychological. It was easy for Elizabeth. She married the man she loved, bore him two children, and made a home for him which was the envy of their friends. It was harder for Ruth. She married Elizabeth's son and then found that, somehow, she could never quite measure up! Isolation, deceit and betrayal fill the gaps between the two individual women and between their different worlds. In this complex thriller, Philippa Gregory deploys all her insight into what women want and what women fear, as Ruth confronts the shifting borders of her own sanity. Laying bare the comfortable conventions of rural England, this spine-tingling novel pulses with suspense until the whiplash double-twist of the denouement.
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Meridon - Meridon knows she does not belong in the dirty, vagabond life of a gypsy bareback rider. The half-remembered vision of another life burns in her heart, even as her beloved sister, Dandy, risks everything for their future. Alone, Meridon follows the urgings of her dream, riding in the moonlight past the rusted gates, up the winding drive to a house -- clutching the golden clasp of the necklace that was her birthright -- home at last to Wideacre. The lost heir of one of England's great estates would take her place as its mistress...

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Queen's Fool - It is winter, 1553. Pursued by the Inquisition, Hannah Green, a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl, is forced to flee Spain with her father. But Hannah is no ordinary refugee. Her gift of "Sight," the ability to foresee the future, is priceless in the troubled times of the Tudor court. Hannah is adopted by the glamorous Robert Dudley, the charismatic son of King Edward's protector, who brings her to court as a "holy fool" for Queen Mary and, ultimately, Queen Elizabeth. Hired as a fool but working as a spy; promised in wedlock but in love with her master; endangered by the laws against heresy, treason, and witchcraft, Hannah must choose between the safe life of a commoner and the dangerous intrigues of the royal family that are inextricably bound up in her own yearnings and desires.

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Wideacre - Beatrice Lacey, as strong-minded as she is beautiful, refuses to conform to the social customs of her time. Destined to lose her family name and beloved Wideacre estate once she is wed, Beatrice will use any means necessary to protect her ancestral heritage. Seduction, betrayal, even murder -- Beatrice's passion is without apology or conscience. "She is a Lacey of Wideacre," her father warns, "and whatever she does, however she behaves, will always be fitting." Yet even as Beatrice's scheming seems about to yield her dream, she is haunted by the one living person who knows the extent of her plans... and her capacity for evil.

Mystery Monday: Linda Fairstein

--by Hanje Richards
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Because I am a huge mystery fan, "Mystery Monday" has been born. Because I like to read mysteries in order, I'm going to list and talk about them in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order. If an author has written more than one series (and many authors have), I'll talk about different series in different posts to keep things as clear as possible.
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For those interested in reading some of the featured titles, I've noted at the end of each book's summary whether it's available at the Copper Queen Library or at another library in Cochise County through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
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Our first featured "Mystery Monday" author is New Yorker Linda Fairstein. A former prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children, she served as head of the Sex Crimes Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1976 until 2002 and is the author of a series of novels featuring Manhattan prosecutor Alexandra Cooper.
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Final Jeopardy (1996). No one knows the inner workings of the D.A.'s office like Linda Fairstein, renowned for two decades as head of Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit. Now, that world comes vividly to life in a brilliant debut novel of shocking realism, powerful insight, and searing suspense.
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Alexandra Cooper, Manhattan's top sex crimes prosecutor, awakens one morning to shocking news: a tabloid headline announcing her own brutal murder. But the actual victim was Isabella Lascar, the Hollywood film star who sought refuge at Alex's Martha'sVineyard retreat. Was Isabella targeted by a stalker or -- mistaken for Alex -- was she in the wrong place at the wrong time? In an investigation that twists from the back alleys of lower Manhattan to the chic salons of the Upper East Side, Alex knows she's in final jeopardy... and time is running out. She has to get into the killer's head before the killer gets to her. (Available at CQL)
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Likely To Die (1997). New York City's oldest and largest medical center is the scene of a ghastly attack: top neurosurgeon Gemma Dogenis, found in her blood-soaked office, where she has been sexually assaulted, stabbed, and designated by the cops as a "likely to die." By the time Alex has plunged into the case, it's a high-profile, media-infested murder investigation with a growing list of suspects from among those who roam the hospital's labyrinthine halls. As Alex's passion to find the killer intensifies, she discovers this hospital is not a place of healing but of deadly peril -- and that she is the next target for lethal violence. (Available at CQL)
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Cold Hit (1999). Alexandra Cooper has seen many murder victims, but few more disturbing than the silk-clad body of a woman, her hands and feet tied to a ladder, pulled from the turbulent waters at Manhattan's northern tip. With her colleagues, including NYPD detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, Alex races against the clock and hopes for a "cold hit" -- a DNA match that would reveal the identity of the murderer by linking the crime to someone already in the police database. But as the case pulls her into the exclusive world of East Side auction houses and cutting-edge Chelsea galleries, Alex discovers she may be marked as an expendable commodity in a chilling and deadly scheme.... (Available at CQL)
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Deadhouse (2001). On Roosevelt Island, a strip of land in New York City's East River, stands an abandoned 19th century smallpox asylum, "The Deadhouse," where the afflicted were shipped off to die. It's a gruesome bit of history perhaps best forgotten. But for Alexandra Cooper, it may be the key to a shocking murder that cuts deeper than the Arctic cold front gripping the city. A respected university professor is dead -- strangled and dumped in an elevator shaft. And while the school does damage control for anxious parents, Cooper and her close friend Detective Mike Chapman scramble for answers, fueled by the most daunting discovery: a piece of paper, found on the lifeless body of Professor Lola Dakota, that reads The Deadhouse... (Available at CQL)

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Bone Vault (2003). In the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exquisite Temple of Dendur, a monument to an ancient world, a very modern debate is raging at a gala dinner: a controversial new exhibit is fiercely opposed by many among the upper echelon of museum donors. Alex Cooper steps into this highly charged ring of power players only to make a much more troubling discovery: a young museum researcher has been murdered, her body shipped to the Met in an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. Together with cops Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, Alex must penetrate the realm of the city's cultural elite to find a killer intent on keeping some secrets buried for eternity. (Available at CQL)
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Kills (2004). Manhattan Assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper is working feverishly on a tough trial, seeking justice for investment banker Paige Vallis. But in a heated "he said, she said" case, Alex learns that Paige herself has something to hide. Uptown, the murder of an elderly woman with an intriguing past has NYPD officer Mercer Wallace and detective Mike Chapman hunting for an item of stunning value that may have cost McQueen Ransome her life: a legendary Double Eagle gold coin. The twisting threads of the seemingly unrelated tragedies soon entangle Alex in a life-and-death struggle in the watery inlets of New Jersey known as the Kills... where a violent predator is determined to silence her forever. (Available at CQL)
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Entombed (2005). It was a crime scene Edgar Allan Poe himself could have conjured, only it was all too real: workers demolishing a nineteenth-century Greenwich Village brownstone where Poe once lived unearthed the skeleton of a young woman -- buried standing upright behind a brick wall. Manhattan Assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper takes on the gruesome case while in pursuit of the Silk Stocking Rapist, who is terrorizing the Upper East Side. But Alex discovers that one crime thread leads to the other as she follows a trail of clues to the Bronx Botanical Gardens, where a group of Poe devotees may shed light on a stone-cold, modern-day murder of Gothic proportions... and a cunning killer with a bone-chilling tale to tell. (Available at CQL)
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Death Dance (2006). Teaming up with longtime friends -- NYPD's Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace -- Assistant D.A. Alex Cooper investigates the disappearance of world-famous dancer Natalya Galinova, who has suddenly vanished backstage at Lincoln Center's Metropolitan Opera House -- during a performance.

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Among Galinova's lovers is Joe Berk, the colorful, strong-willed boss of the Berk Organization, one of four family companies that own all the legitimate theaters on Broadway. The aging ballerina was using Berk to help revive her career at the time of her disappearance. Cooper, Chapman, and Wallace go underground and backstage at the Met, explore Berk's unusual apartment on top of the Belasco Theatre with its rumored ghostly resident, and then discover bizarre circumstances at City Center, which has a peculiar history not one of them knew about until now.

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They meet Joe's niece Mona Berk, who is mounting a vicious campaign to extract her share of the family fortune, and stunning starlet Lucy DeVore, whose beauty may be her fatal undoing. Chet Dobbis is the artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, and therefore privy to the most scandalous exploits among its famous inhabitants. He also knows every inch of the labyrinthine building into which the ballerina disappeared... (Available at CQL)

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Bad Blood (2007). Hundreds of feet below Manhattan, a treacherous tunnel maze is inhabited by the sandhogs, teams of workers who are rebuilding New York City's deteriorating water supply system. Their dark and dangerous world turns deadly when a catastrophic explosion rips through Water Tunnel #3, sending shock waves that are felt throughout the city and inside the courtroom where Alexandra Cooper is dead-set on nailing young businessman Brendan Quillian for the murder of his wealthy wife. The blast sends Alex's case in a shattering new direction -- and pulls her and detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace underground to dig up ancient rivalries and homicidal secrets that may pull Alex in too deep... Brimming with Linda Fairstein's trademark blend of brilliant detective work, cutting edge forensics, and electrifying legal drama, Bad Blood melds two distinctive and riveting New York domains with seamless authenticity and nerve-jangling suspense. (Available through ILL)

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Killer Heat (2008). It's August in New York, and the only thing that's hotter than the pavement is Manhattan D.A. Alex Cooper's personal and professional life. Just as she's claiming an especially gratifying victory in a rape case, she gets the call: the body of a young woman has been found in an abandoned building. The brutality of the murder is disturbing enough, but when a second body is found in Brooklyn, beaten and disposed of in the exact same manner, the city's top brass want the killer found fast. Relying on razor sharp instincts, a whip-smart partner, and one big break, Alex races to find the killer and keep him from killing again, even if it's at her own peril. (Available at CQL)
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Lethal Legacy (2009). When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor convinced that the young woman was assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, refuses to cooperate with investigators. Then, another woman is found murdered in that same apartment with an extremely valuable book, believed to have been stolen. As Alex pursues the murderer, she is drawn into the strange and privileged world of the Hunt family, major benefactors of the New York Public Library and passionate rare book collectors who may be willing to kill for their treasures. (Available at CQL)

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Hell Gate (2010). New York City politics have always been filled with intrigue and behind-the-scenes deals. In Hell Gate, Alex finds her attention torn between investigating a shipwreck that has contraband cargo -- human cargo -- and the political sex scandal of a promising New York congressman now fallen from grace. When Alex discovers that a woman from the wreck and the congressman's lover have the same rose tattoo -- the brand of a "snakehead," a master of a human trafficking operation -- it dawns on her that these cases aren't as unrelated as they seem and that the entire political landscape of New York City could hang in the balance of her investigation. As Alex looks on at the nameless victims in the morgue, she realizes she's looking at the present-day face of New York's long, dark tradition of human trafficking -- a tradition that began hundreds of years ago with slave trade from Africa, now a multimillion-dollar industry that will stop at no cost, even if that cost is Alex's life. (Available at CQL)