Inappropriate Books

Let the kids read up in age...safely.

Apparently there’s some consternation floating about regarding kids coming across “new adult” or adult (primarily romance) fiction via TikTok and being lured in by the cartoon-ish pastel covers, only to be exposed to stories with R-rated sexual content.

It’s hard to know how real this is, but if you’re curious, there’s a recent article in The Guardian about the phenomenon.

I experienced firsthand what these books are like when I read Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker in order to see what’s doing with the “hockey romance” genre, and I can understand, based on the packaging, why someone might think the book’s interior contents are somewhat tame.

Those cartoony people making goo-goo eyes at each other suggests flirtation, but within a few pages of their meeting, Anastasia and Nate are in full carnal knowledge of each other in ways reminiscent of the late-night pay cable “Skinamax” offerings of my youth. It’s not pornography, but it probably isn’t appropriate for tweens.

But I don’t know how big a problem this really is in a world where explicit pornography is available to anyone, including children. Interestingly, according to the Guardian article, some younger readers are asking for books with lower “spice” ratings to make sure they’re getting books suited to their own age and tastes.

I’m actually a big fan of giving young readers freedom of choice over what they read, including the freedom to choose books that may not be strictly appropriate for their age or life experience. I’m not talking about exposing pre-teens to graphic stuff that may actively traumatize them, just that there comes a time in a young reader’s life where dipping into clear adult fare is a relatively safe route towards expanding one’s horizons and learning more about one’s own tastes.

My parents were readers, and when I was a kid, there was much less young adult fare to choose from, so as I hit 13 or 14 years old I was increasingly attracted to adult books and would occasionally pull something off the living room shelves and dive in. These are some of the decidedly adult books I remember reading as a kid, all of them before I turned 16, and probably more like 13 and 14. They must have made an impression on me because I remember them to this day.

I actually read a bunch of Fredrick Forsyth and also Robert Ludlum (The Bourne Identity), most of it with my mom’s knowledge because even though there was murder and intrigue and occasional intra-spy sexy time, there’s very little in this kind of espionage thriller that has a chance to scar a yet-to-be-formed sensibility. The Odessa File is about a sleeper organization of Nazis waiting to rise up and carry out a modern Holocaust. One of the best things about these books is that while there’s casualties along the way, the good guys win in the end. The milieu is also great for sneaking in a little history.

Maybe someone will take issue with me saying that the Book of Revelation is questionable material for a 12-year-old, but let me tell you, that stuff freaked me out. I don’t even remember what spurred me to page to the back of the New Testament and see how the whole thing ends, but once you get to the part where those seven seals are cracked, shit gets weird and scary. I mean: the sun becomes black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon like blood (6:12). I wasn’t much of a believer by that time, and it still managed to send chills up my arms. I have come to understand that the prophecy is intended to comfort believers by reminding them that as bad as things may be, that badness is a prophecy for Jesus’ return which is going to be awesome. Our current Speaker of the House is among those who believe this event may be imminent and that perhaps people of importance (like him) should do what it takes to help bring it about.

I’m freaked out all over again.

I honestly don’t know if Shogun was necessarily all that inappropriate for a thirteen year old, but clearly a gazillion page book about a white dude trying to make his way in 17th century Japan is not geared towards a kid. This book was a massive presence in my youth, both because of it being a bestseller and the 1980 mini series starring Richard Chamberlain. In digging around for this book cover I saw that they’ve actually remade the miniseries and it debuts on Hulu this month.

I’ve written multiple times in the past about how Tom Wolfe was a seminal writer for me when it came to getting interested in writing as an act of individual expression. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, a collection of his long form pieces that marked the start of the New Journalism movement was the first of his books I read, and for the most part the material isn’t all that inappropriate for a youngster, though later reads through The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (a dissection of Ken Kesey and the merry pranksters doing lots of LSD) and Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (Black Panthers hanging out at Leonard Bernstein’s) were more questionable and I’m sure largely flew over my head. I was so besotted by Wolfe’s style that I wrote my high school English term paper about him in an imitation of that style, earning a C- (later revised up to a B thanks to parental intervention) in the process.

It’s hard to overstate how ubiquitous this book was, the story of Ayla, a young Cro-Magnon child who is abandoned and comes to live with a clan of Neanderthals. In the timeline of human development, the Cro-Magnons were the replacement species for the Neanderthals, so Ayla is not looked at kindly, but she is protected by some members of the clan, including a medicine woman. It’s just a weird-ass book that’s something like a prehistoric soap opera/saga that also has some graphic sexual assault that thirteen-year-old me probably shouldn’t have been reading. I hid this book from my mom and only read it when I wouldn’t be detected.

I don’t know, maybe I’m romanticizing things in my old age, but I think there was something meaningful about being able to explore the adult world through books without my parents necessarily fully knowing what was going on. I’m sure I didn’t understand huge swaths of these books, but that seemed okay to me. I was a kid, I wasn’t supposed to know much of anything yet, and how else was I supposed to be figuring things out other than reading a bunch of books?

I know I’m not the only one out there who was reading above his age level pre-adulthood. What “inappropriate” books do you remember reading?

Links

This week at the Chicago Tribune I discuss Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech and how the past informs the present.

At Inside Higher Ed this week I explored how one thing schools should focus on in a world of AI text generation is helping students cultivate and communicate their taste since this is something AI can’t touch.

It was inevitable. AI scammers are impersonating authors on Amazon.

Not strictly about books, but I thought it was interesting in the context of some of the thinking I’ve been doing about how we create an ecosystem that supports writing: “US Media Is Collapsing, Here’s How to Save It” by Alissa Quart.

LitHub has 23 books released this past week.

Here’s an interesting article about the book Poor Things, which provided the source material for one of this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Picture.

At Slate Dan Kois gives the business to a new book by former Times book critic Michiko Kakutani.

Speaking of Michiko Kakutani, here’s a classic that might’ve been the first viral piece to come out of the McSweeney’s website, “I am Michiko Kakutani” by Colin McEnroe.

Recommendations

1. Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
2. While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams
3. Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge
4. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
5. Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan

Nancy. G. - Lawrenceville, GA

For Nancy I’m going with a perennial favorite recommendation for people who seem to like history and good character work, A.S. Byatt’s Possession.

1.  Half A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngoni Adichie
2.  The Heaven And Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
3.  Trust by Hernan Diaz
4.  The Book Of Goose by Yiyum Li
5.  The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Therese O., Michiana Shores, Indiana

Vendela Vida writes consistently engaging novels with great psychological acuity. We Run the Tides is the pick for Therese.

1. The Fraud by Zadie Smith
2. The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff 
3. Savage Gods by Paul Kingsnorth
4. North Woods by Daniel Mason
5. The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton 

Adrian N. - Aurora, CO

Folks should know that Adrian is a teacher with a fantastic newsletter reflecting on his work in the classroom. As for my reading recommendation, a kind of boarding school campus novel feels like a good fit, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.¹

As always, I’m soliciting requests for reading recommendations and the way to do that is by following the instructions at the link below.

I’m trying to think of some other adult books I read when I was still very much a kid. The Autobiography of Malcolm X was definitely one, as was Roots also by Alex Haley, but I’d argue that more kids should read those. I read Exodus by Leon Uris also, which I don’t recall having a ton of adult content, but was a stretch for a kid’s sensibilities.

I really am curious. What were the adult books you read when you were still a kid? what mark did they leave on you?

I’m having a great weekend visiting family for Mrs. Biblioracle’s mom’s 90th birthday. I hope you all are well wherever you are.

JW
The Biblioracle

1. All books (with the occasional exception) linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and an additional reading/writing/literacy nonprofit to be determined. Affiliate income for this year is $28.90.