Ah, books

  Discussion over in the land of bsc_snark over references made me remember a discussion Mums and I had not too long ago. I don't remember what sparked that convo, but basically it dealt with the types of books I read as a kid/pre-teen. I think it came about because we were discussing the pros and cons of picking out your own books and where one draws the line with what's appropriate and what's not.
( Pretty sure this we've discussed before. )

(Come to think of it, I don't have many warm fuzzy memories of any librarian outside of our school librarian from childhood. That's just sad given the amount of time I spent in the library.)

  Sixth grade, prior to R.L. Stine breaking out amongst the sixth graders (first book fair of the year), Mums picked out Slumber Party for me to read because she didn't think I was ready for Stephen King and I'd run through most of the books I had any obvious interest in the juvenile section thus far. To this day I think I've only completed one full length SK novel and that was Carrie. (I tried Christine. Yeaaaaaaah...)

  So. Back to the beginning. Mums said something when we had our talk recently, and I remembered that she didn't really pre-read my books for me. I asked if it was a conscious decision or if it was simply at that time our book preferences didn't match up at all/she trusted me/whatever came to mind. She said that she and Dad figured that so long as I wasn't reading anything with a bunch of sex in it, they didn't see any reason to intervene. (I suppose V.C. Andrews doesn't exactly have a *lot* of sex, right?) I pointed out that what I was reading at the time had a fair amount of violence, usually murder, and she shrugged and said that they figured they could handle the violence.

This made me snicker quite a bit.