"Words are Life."

—the retirees who’ve read more murder mysteries than I’ve had hot meals

—the paperback romance girlies (gender neutral) who check out every single bodice ripper the second it hits the shelves

—the dads very slowly making their way through a ‘1001 movies to see before you die’ list

—the one-man criterion collection who checks out like, three movies per day and brings them back the next. (TV series are only a minor roadblock.)

How to Defend Books and Why

Danny Caine

Listen on Audiobook

You're invited to the book revolution!

Fight back against censorship and empower your community with this close look at the book banning movement.

In a moving, compulsively readable call to arms for readers everywhere, Danny Caine, bestselling author of How to Resist Amazon and Why and How to Protect Bookstores and Why, offers an expertly-crafted confrontation of far-right, Christian nationalist attempts to reshape American culture through ban campaigns targeting schools, libraries, bookstores, and prisons, with the aim to silence marginalized identities in life and in literature.

From the first-ever banned books display at San Francisco's City Lights in the 1950s to the rapid rise of so-called Moms For Liberty during the COVID-19 pandemic to attempts to silence Palestinian authors, Caine charts the course of repressive censorship campaigns, along with the creative and sometimes unlikely activists who've stood up against them.

Each chapter is based on a particular book banning episode, bolstered by research and legal precedent, and concludes with helpful takeaways for further reading or resistance.

Throughout, Caine approaches these heated issues with gentle openness harkening back to his work as a public school teacher and a bookseller.

He emphasizes our collective responsibility towards art, free speech, and each other.

if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars

literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that. Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?

you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)

if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too

learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life

The star of the show is a cat in a tiara

There are enough pop culture references to make a spreadsheet of them

There's a Spotify Playlist curated by the author

Surprisingly deep themes and found family are hidden in the dick jokes and gory horror

Of like three canon romances (all side notes really) one contains a furry and one a sex worker

Toxic yaoi with a foot fetish on main

A literal ball busting GILF

The fandom calls itself a cult

some people really don’t realize how privileged they are that they get fanfics for free. imagine having access to something for free because someone is kind enough to share it with you… and then being rude, entitled and an ungrateful pos to that person who was kind enough to share their creation with you for free

“almost 1 year is a lil too much for me” fuck off. fanfic writers don’t owe you anything. one of my favorite fics was updated after 13 years, and what I did is that I thanked the author for choosing to continue the work, I didn’t act like a spoiled toddler by asking why they didn’t update sooner. and even if a writer chooses to abandon their fic permanently with no explanation, that is their choice, their hobby, their decision. they don’t owe your entitled ass anything.

A tale as old as time, a bibliophile picks up the first book of a series on recommendation from several of his buddies, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, or other similar categories of people. He opens it, blinks, and it is suddenly two weeks later, he’s halfway through the eighth book, and his other obligations are mysteriously two weeks behind. These events are certainly not related in a causative manner.