4 ms·

Lists of banned books are often quite disappointing, and I think they fall into a few categories: - Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being ba

Lists of banned books are often quite disappointing, and I think they fall into a few categories: - Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale) - Books that seem relatively anodyne, and it's not clear why they were banned. (eg: the perks of being a wallflower) - Books that governments might have feared in the old days, but are now much less threatening than other more readily-available material. (eg: 1984) I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information. Instead, modern book-banning feels much more symbolic. ie, "we do not approve of this book!" rather than effective. Anyone can buy the book on Amazon, or pirate it for free, or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas. And importantly, find many, many more extreme, subvesrive, rebellious, etc. ideas for free online. Of course I do not support the banning of the books, but I think sometimes once a book is banned this act gives the book power -- in more senses than one. Less discussed is that the fans of the book often believe it to be better than it actually is, merely for being banned.

nottorp 3mo ago
> Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale) Handmaid's Tale is actually a pretty decently written book for a dystopia. You just need to like dystopias.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - the_af 3mo ago
    It's not about Islam. If that's what you thought, I suggest a second read, this time paying more attention?
    - zulux 3mo ago
      "Atwood herself has acknowledged that the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which took place in 1978-79, was a direct inspiration for her novel." https://www.patreon.com/DarvishIntelligence/posts/handmaids-tale-142940557 https://www.patreon.com/DarvishIntelligence/posts/handmaids-...
      - the_af 3mo ago
        https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-the-handmaids-tale/ https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-... From Atwood herself: "The deep foundation of the United States—so went my thinking—was not the comparatively recent 18th-century Enlightenment structures of the Republic, with their talk of equality and their separation of Church and State, but the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th-century Puritan New England—with its marked bias against women—which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself."" "Like the original theocracy, this one would select a few passages from the Bible to justify its actions, and it would lean heavily towards the Old Testament, not towards the New. [...] Surely the Gilead command would have moved to eliminate the Quakers, as their 17th-century Puritan forebears had done." "I made a rule for myself: I would not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist. I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable behavior. The group-activated hangings, the tearing apart of human beings, the clothing specific to castes and classes, the forced childbearing and the appropriation of the results, the children stolen by regimes and placed for upbringing with high-ranking officials, the forbidding of literacy, the denial of property rights—all had precedents, and many of these were to be found, not in other cultures and religions, but within Western society, and within the “Christian” tradition itself. (I enclose “Christian” in quotation marks, since I believe that much of the Church’s behavior and doctrine during its two-millennia-long existence as a social and political organization would have been abhorrent to the person after whom it is named.)"
  - nottorp 3mo ago
    If you read the book instead of watching "influencers" you'd notice it's explicitly about a Christian theocracy, but whatever.
    - like_any_other 3mo ago
      Yes, it's "about a Christian theocracy" in the sense of "what if a Christian theocracy behaved exactly like an Islamic one". "Atwood was also inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978–79 that saw a theocracy established that drastically reduced the rights of women and imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women, very much like that of Gilead." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale#Composition_background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale#Composit...
      - the_af 3mo ago
        Nope. A Christian theocracy of Puritan values. From Atwood herself (https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-the-handmaids-tale/ https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-...) "The deep foundation of the United States—so went my thinking—was not the comparatively recent 18th-century Enlightenment structures of the Republic, with their talk of equality and their separation of Church and State, but the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th-century Puritan New England—with its marked bias against women—which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself."
        like_any_other 3mo ago
        God forbid we notice any similarities not approved by the author. How silly of me to think it could be about anything other than the religion and cultures where gender equality is the highest.
        the_af 3mo ago
        Oh, the similarities to fundamentalist Islam are absolutely warranted, I just wanted to address the incorrect claim that Atwood wrote Handmain about Iran or Islam (which is false). Of course all fundamentalist oppressive branches of religions, be it Christianity, Islam, Judaism or whatever, converge to similar shapes. Atwood was worried about trends in the US and imagined a world where the earliest conservative Puritan Christianity -- that she considers a foundational part of America -- made a comeback. So no "gender equality". The early Puritans didn't behave "like Islam", any similarities are a result of a convergent evolution of sorts; their sins are entirely their own: fundamentalist Christianity. Atwood said much, that these were faults of the West she was describing. I'm all for Death of the Author, but the specific claim I refuted was about what Handmaid was intended to be about (not other valid interpretations) and only the author can answer that. And she did!
the_af 3mo ago
> Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale) Weird example. The Handmaid's Tale is quite good. Edit: wow, downvotes for stating a book is quite good. HN at its worst. Edit 2: in fact it's so bizarre, also seeing other commenters here downvoted for saying Handmaid is a good book, that I struggled to see the reason for the ire. I'm not from the US, mind you, so it took me a while to add 2 and 2 and remember Atwood and Handmaid are in the current political climate of the US an anti-Trump stance. So that has to be the reason. Saying Handmaid is a good book implies you're anti-Trump and therefore invites downvotes (but also upvotes from the other camp, I'd guess). Wow.
- SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - the_af 3mo ago
    I didn't mention the show, isn't this thread and article about books? > It was a thinly veiled world-building exercise on the subjection of women in Islam… then it ends. Nothing really happens. The Handmaid's Tale wasn't about Islam but about religious Christian fundamentalism and, by Atwood's own words, an extrapolation of trends she saw in the US. It's a good book, it seems contentious to list it as a "bad book" as a given, and expect people to agree with you. It's an acclaimed book and well received by other authors. > Nothing really happens. Bizarre take. In structure it has a lot of parallels to 1984, the protagonist is trapped in an oppressive regime seemingly without escape, some authority figures are ambiguous, there's some hope but it can turn into a trap, and finally a sort of open end (both Winston's and Offred's fates are implied but unresolved, though Offred's is more ambiguous) and a an epilogue explaining the regime and its implied downfall. Do you also find 1984 as a novel where nothing happens?
    - SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
      [flagged]
jnovek 3mo ago
“The Handmaid’s Tale is a bad book” is a wild take to start with. “I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information.” You don’t think a school library can prevent access to information? Poor people exist.
- everdrive 3mo ago
  I figured my chosen examples would be the least popular part of the post. :) I just don't think you can prevent access to information the same way, though. There will be at least one smart phone in the house. There will be friends and relatives with smartphones, with computers, etc. A poor person who lacks the resources to query on youtube for videos or wikipedia for research will also not be able to sit through a full-length novel. [edit] In the 1960s it may yet have been true (despite radio and shortwave) that if your local libraries and shops did not contain a book -- if your friends had never heard of its ideas -- that you would truly remain ignorant of some of the subversive ideas out there. Things just do not work that way these days. Ideas spread faster and farther than ever. You really cannot prevent the spread of information the same way. At best, you can create a culture of censorship around certain information, which is what I believe modern book-banning does. My quibble here is that people seem to treat book-banning as if it's 1890, and the ideas are being killed due to lack of spread. In the modern world, book banning is symbolic and helps to identify ideas as subversive and unwanted -- but they are NOT out of reach. Again, I do not support book banning whatsoever.
runako 3mo ago
> ... prevent access to information. ... or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas Popping in to point out that novels are not "information" in the sense of being lists of facts or ideas. The medium is part of the message. That's why novels can be banned but a list of the facts/ideas are often not. Reading an AI summary of a novel is not even roughly equivalent to reading the book. (Before AI, there were handwritten summaries like Cliff's Notes that served the same purpose of allowing a person to gain a superficial understanding of a book.) For example: one could list the key facts of _Roots_ (banned in school libraries in the author's home state of Tennessee in 2026) and not convey the points of the book, which is embodied in the totality of the work. Incidentally, _Roots_ was banned for integral parts of the message of the book.
- everdrive 3mo ago
  I think that's a really fair point. A full novel will give you an emotional impact that a list of facts will not provide. A beautifully-told story can convince (at least some people) better than any argument. I'd still hold that you can just get ahold of books these days if you want to, but your point stands that the mere spread of ideas is not equivalent to really reading the whole book.
guilhas 3mo ago
The banned book of the TV hit series The Handmaid's Tale. Watch it tonight on Prime Video!

nottorp 3mo ago

> Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale) Handmaid's Tale is actually a pretty decently written book for a dystopia. You just need to like dystopias.

SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
[flagged]
- the_af 3mo ago
  It's not about Islam. If that's what you thought, I suggest a second read, this time paying more attention?
  - zulux 3mo ago
    "Atwood herself has acknowledged that the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which took place in 1978-79, was a direct inspiration for her novel." https://www.patreon.com/DarvishIntelligence/posts/handmaids-tale-142940557 https://www.patreon.com/DarvishIntelligence/posts/handmaids-...
    - the_af 3mo ago
      https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-the-handmaids-tale/ https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-... From Atwood herself: "The deep foundation of the United States—so went my thinking—was not the comparatively recent 18th-century Enlightenment structures of the Republic, with their talk of equality and their separation of Church and State, but the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th-century Puritan New England—with its marked bias against women—which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself."" "Like the original theocracy, this one would select a few passages from the Bible to justify its actions, and it would lean heavily towards the Old Testament, not towards the New. [...] Surely the Gilead command would have moved to eliminate the Quakers, as their 17th-century Puritan forebears had done." "I made a rule for myself: I would not include anything that human beings had not already done in some other place or time, or for which the technology did not already exist. I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable behavior. The group-activated hangings, the tearing apart of human beings, the clothing specific to castes and classes, the forced childbearing and the appropriation of the results, the children stolen by regimes and placed for upbringing with high-ranking officials, the forbidding of literacy, the denial of property rights—all had precedents, and many of these were to be found, not in other cultures and religions, but within Western society, and within the “Christian” tradition itself. (I enclose “Christian” in quotation marks, since I believe that much of the Church’s behavior and doctrine during its two-millennia-long existence as a social and political organization would have been abhorrent to the person after whom it is named.)"
- nottorp 3mo ago
  If you read the book instead of watching "influencers" you'd notice it's explicitly about a Christian theocracy, but whatever.
  - like_any_other 3mo ago
    Yes, it's "about a Christian theocracy" in the sense of "what if a Christian theocracy behaved exactly like an Islamic one". "Atwood was also inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978–79 that saw a theocracy established that drastically reduced the rights of women and imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women, very much like that of Gilead." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale#Composition_background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale#Composit...
    - the_af 3mo ago
      Nope. A Christian theocracy of Puritan values. From Atwood herself (https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-the-handmaids-tale/ https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-...) "The deep foundation of the United States—so went my thinking—was not the comparatively recent 18th-century Enlightenment structures of the Republic, with their talk of equality and their separation of Church and State, but the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th-century Puritan New England—with its marked bias against women—which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself."
      - like_any_other 3mo ago
        God forbid we notice any similarities not approved by the author. How silly of me to think it could be about anything other than the religion and cultures where gender equality is the highest.
        the_af 3mo ago
        Oh, the similarities to fundamentalist Islam are absolutely warranted, I just wanted to address the incorrect claim that Atwood wrote Handmain about Iran or Islam (which is false). Of course all fundamentalist oppressive branches of religions, be it Christianity, Islam, Judaism or whatever, converge to similar shapes. Atwood was worried about trends in the US and imagined a world where the earliest conservative Puritan Christianity -- that she considers a foundational part of America -- made a comeback. So no "gender equality". The early Puritans didn't behave "like Islam", any similarities are a result of a convergent evolution of sorts; their sins are entirely their own: fundamentalist Christianity. Atwood said much, that these were faults of the West she was describing. I'm all for Death of the Author, but the specific claim I refuted was about what Handmaid was intended to be about (not other valid interpretations) and only the author can answer that. And she did!

the_af 3mo ago

> Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale) Weird example. The Handmaid's Tale is quite good. Edit: wow, downvotes for stating a book is quite good. HN at its worst. Edit 2: in fact it's so bizarre, also seeing other commenters here downvoted for saying Handmaid is a good book, that I struggled to see the reason for the ire. I'm not from the US, mind you, so it took me a while to add 2 and 2 and remember Atwood and Handmaid are in the current political climate of the US an anti-Trump stance. So that has to be the reason. Saying Handmaid is a good book implies you're anti-Trump and therefore invites downvotes (but also upvotes from the other camp, I'd guess). Wow.

SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
[flagged]
- the_af 3mo ago
  I didn't mention the show, isn't this thread and article about books? > It was a thinly veiled world-building exercise on the subjection of women in Islam… then it ends. Nothing really happens. The Handmaid's Tale wasn't about Islam but about religious Christian fundamentalism and, by Atwood's own words, an extrapolation of trends she saw in the US. It's a good book, it seems contentious to list it as a "bad book" as a given, and expect people to agree with you. It's an acclaimed book and well received by other authors. > Nothing really happens. Bizarre take. In structure it has a lot of parallels to 1984, the protagonist is trapped in an oppressive regime seemingly without escape, some authority figures are ambiguous, there's some hope but it can turn into a trap, and finally a sort of open end (both Winston's and Offred's fates are implied but unresolved, though Offred's is more ambiguous) and a an epilogue explaining the regime and its implied downfall. Do you also find 1984 as a novel where nothing happens?
  - SV_BubbleTime 3mo ago
    [flagged]

jnovek 3mo ago

“The Handmaid’s Tale is a bad book” is a wild take to start with. “I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information.” You don’t think a school library can prevent access to information? Poor people exist.

everdrive 3mo ago
I figured my chosen examples would be the least popular part of the post. :) I just don't think you can prevent access to information the same way, though. There will be at least one smart phone in the house. There will be friends and relatives with smartphones, with computers, etc. A poor person who lacks the resources to query on youtube for videos or wikipedia for research will also not be able to sit through a full-length novel. [edit] In the 1960s it may yet have been true (despite radio and shortwave) that if your local libraries and shops did not contain a book -- if your friends had never heard of its ideas -- that you would truly remain ignorant of some of the subversive ideas out there. Things just do not work that way these days. Ideas spread faster and farther than ever. You really cannot prevent the spread of information the same way. At best, you can create a culture of censorship around certain information, which is what I believe modern book-banning does. My quibble here is that people seem to treat book-banning as if it's 1890, and the ideas are being killed due to lack of spread. In the modern world, book banning is symbolic and helps to identify ideas as subversive and unwanted -- but they are NOT out of reach. Again, I do not support book banning whatsoever.

runako 3mo ago

> ... prevent access to information. ... or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas Popping in to point out that novels are not "information" in the sense of being lists of facts or ideas. The medium is part of the message. That's why novels can be banned but a list of the facts/ideas are often not. Reading an AI summary of a novel is not even roughly equivalent to reading the book. (Before AI, there were handwritten summaries like Cliff's Notes that served the same purpose of allowing a person to gain a superficial understanding of a book.) For example: one could list the key facts of _Roots_ (banned in school libraries in the author's home state of Tennessee in 2026) and not convey the points of the book, which is embodied in the totality of the work. Incidentally, _Roots_ was banned for integral parts of the message of the book.

everdrive 3mo ago
I think that's a really fair point. A full novel will give you an emotional impact that a list of facts will not provide. A beautifully-told story can convince (at least some people) better than any argument. I'd still hold that you can just get ahold of books these days if you want to, but your point stands that the mere spread of ideas is not equivalent to really reading the whole book.

guilhas 3mo ago

The banned book of the TV hit series The Handmaid's Tale. Watch it tonight on Prime Video!