Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The thread about the daughter downloading a potentially inappropriate book got me thinking about a very inappropriate book I read when I was young.

I was an avid reader and my mom worked from home, so summers we had no camps but were relatively unsupervised.

At 11, I grabbed Updike's Witches of Eastwick, thinking it was some sort of fairly tale. Holy cow I learned a lot about sex reading that book. I'm not sure my mom had any clue.

Anyone else recall reading something and getting more than you bargained for?

You are kidding right?
Troll?

We do not censor books period.
Anyone who does is a dam fool. Big whoop sex omg you do know babies are made that way??
Maybe if people in the state of Texas actually read books 100 12 year olds would not need abortions.

Curious—do you provide copies of Hustler to your 12-year-old as well? Or maybe Penthouse “for the articles” on your coffee table? Or is the explicit material only fine if it’s embedded in a hard-bound novel?
It’s weird to me that people pretend we don’t already have existing standards about what’s appropriate sexual content for kids to consume (and that there are laws preventing adults from providing that content to children), but when someone points out that sometimes that content is contained inside arguably GOOD literature so is not appropriate for CHILDREN to access, you crazies cry “censorship!”

Anonymous wrote:I'm with all of you 80's kids. I read Danielle Steele, Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz, Judy Blume and Sidney Sheldon. I remeber reading Flowers in the Attic but I don't think I read V.C. Andrews much beyond that. I was never into Stephen King or other horror, true crime or sci-fi.

I remember my parents trying to keep me away from Forever but we all got ahold of it and read the good parts in late elementary school.

Now imagine your 9th grade English teacher giving everyone a copy of Forever and announcing that the literature unit for the next six weeks will be crafted around this book and exploring “sometimes uncomfortable” themes.
This is basically how it is now.
They just send an email to notify parents that the book contains “sexually explicit content” and if the parent wants to, they can request alternative literature that does NOT contain sexually explicit content.

Let that sink in.

The teachers are telling us that their default is choosing literature that contains sexually-explicit material.

You must make a special *request* if you do NOT want sexually-explicit literature introduced to your child in the classroom.

Wild.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VC Andrew’s messed up my worldview for years

I started reading her books at 12, and they did nothing to me at all. How did it mess up your worldview?

I was younger and it messed up my understanding of how men and women interact in relationships.

Ha! There's a line from Flowers in the Attic that is seared in my memory: "He drove his rigid member into my resisting flesh."

Exactly. I was way too young to be reading about increst and rape.

My sister just reminded me of this book and how she checked it out secretly from the school library when she was a high school freshman and read it in her closet just to be a little rebellious but was then so disturbed by that particular part that she closed the book and threw it behind some clothes. She eventually returned it without reading the rest but she said it haunted her and sort of ruined the way she thought about sex.
And this is the concern.
Kids (even high school ones) whose first exposure to physical intimacy is in the context of these descriptive passages of graphic traumatic events do not have any real world experience by which to contrast why they are reading. What we consume shapes who we become.
And of course there will be other children who unfortunately have a reality that causes them to closely identify with what they are reading. And that can also be pretty traumatic as well.

My kid’s 10th grade class just started reading Homegoing, and there is just so
much of this in that book as well that we decided to opt our kid out. (Not because it is a terrible book. It’s actually an excellent, well-written book that tells a compelling story, so I’m not saying our kid should never read it. But it just strikes me as just too much intense drama, too soon in life.)

I read anything starting at age 10ish so I definitely read stuff I didn’t quite understand or didn’t fully grasp the implications. I remember going back to some books when I was much older and realizing a more adult plotline or theme had gone waaaay over my head.

I'm with all of you 80's kids. I read Danielle Steele, Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz, Judy Blume and Sidney Sheldon. I remeber reading Flowers in the Attic but I don't think I read V.C. Andrews much beyond that. I was never into Stephen King or other horror, true crime or sci-fi.

I remember my parents trying to keep me away from Forever but we all got ahold of it and read the good parts in late elementary school.

Anonymous wrote:Thinner by Stephen King freaked me out for years. Like wanted to sleep in my parents’ room even though I was 11 or 12.

Also, my comments have nothing to do with whether or not kids should be censored. I’m just answering the question. VC Andrews and Stephen King were too much for me as a very sheltered and precocious reader. YMMV

There’s this Stephen King short story about a heroin addict who ends up stranded on a desert island and he eats his own hand. There’s this line about “cold roast beef”. My brother and I are in our sixties and we can still freak each other out by saying that in a certain tone of voice.

Forever

Anonymous wrote:Thinner by Stephen King freaked me out for years. Like wanted to sleep in my parents’ room even though I was 11 or 12.

Also, my comments have nothing to do with whether or not kids should be censored. I’m just answering the question. VC Andrews and Stephen King were too much for me as a very sheltered and precocious reader. YMMV

I was coming here to say Thinner!!!

Anonymous wrote:I read most of Stephen Kings 80s novels like It, The Stand, Tommyknockers and Needful
things as a young teen.

And here I stand a functional adult.

I wonder if aspiring book banners will go back to weird 70s and 80s books to “protect the children?”

Me too. I read Salem’s Lot when I was 9. And I remember trying to read The Stand in 6th grade (reading under the desk during math) and getting detention for it!

Like many others, VC Andrews and Stephen King books stick out the most for me, I read them in middle school.

My kids are now in college, and I didn’t censor their reading at all, but what I noticed is that there are so many more YA books now (and good ones at that) that they weren’t seeking out Stephen King books in middle school.

I read tons and tons of romances as a girl, many explicit. Didn’t mess me up at all dating and I didn’t sleep around. I had a few long term bfs before dh and they were all good men. Currently read a lot of booktok and am reading more than ever. Great sx life with dh.

This thread is sort of scaring me. I would have let my daughters read anything at all (they’re too little now) but now I’m rethinking that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was in elementary school when the tv adaptation of The Thorn Birds aired. I wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch it, so I checked the book out of the public library. I learned the word “flaccid.” 😊

Ha, I did a book report on the Thorn Birds in 5th grade. My parents did not censor books, and I had found it on the shelf. I was more interested in the historical aspect anyway, but I remember my teacher called them about it to make sure they knew what I was reading. I also read Clan of the Cave Bear around that time -maybe a little older. I just skipped over the sex scenes.

Haha, I read all the Jean Auel books in 7th grade. An education indeed. My mom was reading them at the same time but I got through them faster. She was horrified when she got to the very graphic sex scenes in the first sequel and asked if I’d read it. I assured her I’d skipped over them but, of course, I hadn’t.

Thinner by Stephen King freaked me out for years. Like wanted to sleep in my parents’ room even though I was 11 or 12.

Also, my comments have nothing to do with whether or not kids should be censored. I’m just answering the question. VC Andrews and Stephen King were too much for me as a very sheltered and precocious reader. YMMV

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:VC Andrew’s messed up my worldview for years

I started reading her books at 12, and they did nothing to me at all. How did it mess up your worldview?

I was younger and it messed up my understanding of how men and women interact in relationships.

Ha! There's a line from Flowers in the Attic that is seared in my memory: "He drove his rigid member into my resisting flesh."

Exactly. I was way too young to be reading about increst and rape.

Anonymous wrote:VC Andrew’s messed up my worldview for years

SAME