Writer's Block: Forbidden Reading
Books my parents took away from me:
Judy Blume (apparently based on Tiger's Eye, I've never been quite sure why, but I wasn't very interested in her books anyway)
The Dragonlance books (they thought Dungeons & Dragons stuff would turn me into a serial killer. I think my dad is still half-convinced of that.)
Piers Anthony (once they caught me with the one with the girl who was a cutter and had graphic flashbacks to being gang-raped. I was 12 or 13, so maybe they were right, but they still don't want me to read him and I'm 24.)
Books they would have and probably should have if they'd realized what I was reading:
Clan of the Cave Bear (or more accurately, the second book, Valley of the Horses, which gets reeeeeally explicit)
Flowers in the Attic (brother/sister love, wow)
several romance novels (including my entire Jude Deveraux collection)
The Dragons of Pern series (which are excellent but maybe a little graphic for a 2nd grader)
Tami Hoag, Iris Johansen, and several other serial-killer-themed authors (whose dark, gritty, graphic and profanity-stuffed works actually gave me nightmares, which is why I eventually gave them up)
The only book I remember hiding from my parents was The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey. There was an out-of-wedlock scene or two, and this was shortly following the great Piers Anthony ban, so I was being extra cautious, though probably needlessly.
Most of this happened before I started high school and mostly before middle school. They didn't really try to control my reading after the age of 13 or so, ironic since they're very strict about TV shows and movies. Go figure.
Judy Blume (apparently based on Tiger's Eye, I've never been quite sure why, but I wasn't very interested in her books anyway)
The Dragonlance books (they thought Dungeons & Dragons stuff would turn me into a serial killer. I think my dad is still half-convinced of that.)
Piers Anthony (once they caught me with the one with the girl who was a cutter and had graphic flashbacks to being gang-raped. I was 12 or 13, so maybe they were right, but they still don't want me to read him and I'm 24.)
Books they would have and probably should have if they'd realized what I was reading:
Clan of the Cave Bear (or more accurately, the second book, Valley of the Horses, which gets reeeeeally explicit)
Flowers in the Attic (brother/sister love, wow)
several romance novels (including my entire Jude Deveraux collection)
The Dragons of Pern series (which are excellent but maybe a little graphic for a 2nd grader)
Tami Hoag, Iris Johansen, and several other serial-killer-themed authors (whose dark, gritty, graphic and profanity-stuffed works actually gave me nightmares, which is why I eventually gave them up)
The only book I remember hiding from my parents was The Rowan by Anne McCaffrey. There was an out-of-wedlock scene or two, and this was shortly following the great Piers Anthony ban, so I was being extra cautious, though probably needlessly.
Most of this happened before I started high school and mostly before middle school. They didn't really try to control my reading after the age of 13 or so, ironic since they're very strict about TV shows and movies. Go figure.