As far as I can tell there won't be much more information coming regarding the Amazon "glitch" that lit Twitter on fire and sent the company stumbling through controversy this past weekend. In addition to the company's claims of "cataloging error," a hacker has also claimed responsibility for the problem on his blog.
I remain skeptical of both explanations, and in the end we may never know what really happened. Here's hoping the situation is rectified in a hurry, no matter the cause.
Read a thorough summary of the story in the New York Times today here.
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Censorship. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Amazon A-Twitter
There is a rapidly unfolding story in the world of book sales that caused an absolute Twitter frenzy over the weekend. According to reports, Amazon has recently stripped certain book titles of their sales rankings. From what I can gather, in addition to the bestseller lists, Amazon sales rankings also factor into their search results, an important tool in online book sales.
What books are being stripped? Authors and users are initially reporting that the connective thread between the targeted book titles is erotic content and gay and lesbian content.
Amazon officials are currently calling it a glitch, but Twitterers, responding to a tweet from book critic Bethanne Patrick who initially sparked the frenzy, have seized on the topic and remain skeptical, many calling for a boycott under the hashtag #amazonfail.
Seattle Pi is currently quoting Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener as saying, "This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection."
This story is unfolding so rapidly, I'm certain I won't be able to keep up with it on this blog. You can follow it with more reliability (no rumor or unsourced quotes) over at the LA Times' Literary Blog (which is pretty fantastic by the way) called Jacket Copy.
Whether this turns out to be a rapidly corrected glitch as Amazon seems to be claiming, or a signal of future policy, I think Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy really summed it up perfectly:
What books are being stripped? Authors and users are initially reporting that the connective thread between the targeted book titles is erotic content and gay and lesbian content.
Amazon officials are currently calling it a glitch, but Twitterers, responding to a tweet from book critic Bethanne Patrick who initially sparked the frenzy, have seized on the topic and remain skeptical, many calling for a boycott under the hashtag #amazonfail.
Seattle Pi is currently quoting Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener as saying, "This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection."
This story is unfolding so rapidly, I'm certain I won't be able to keep up with it on this blog. You can follow it with more reliability (no rumor or unsourced quotes) over at the LA Times' Literary Blog (which is pretty fantastic by the way) called Jacket Copy.
Whether this turns out to be a rapidly corrected glitch as Amazon seems to be claiming, or a signal of future policy, I think Carolyn Kellogg at Jacket Copy really summed it up perfectly:
But as troubling as the unevenness of the policy of un-ranking and de-searching certain titles might be, it's a bit beside the point. It's the action itself that is troubling: making books harder to find, or keeping them off bestseller lists on the basis of their content can't be a good idea.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
It's Only Crazy When You're Wrong
Sometimes real life events unfold like one of David E. Kelley's wacky courtroom dramas. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's priceless.
A friend recently sent me a link to an article from the Sun Journal of Maine, detailing the story of JoAn Karkos, 64, who refused to return a book she had checked out from the Lewiston library after determining that it was inappropriate for children. The book in question? It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health by Robie H. Harris. The contents of the book seem self-explanatory, but in fairness I think the customer comments on the book's Amazon page perfectly capture the disparity of opinions over the book's contents and why there might be cause for some objection.
Unfortunately for Karkos, who first attempted to buy the book before refusing to return it, this is not a legal means to removing it permanently from the library. So the city took her to court to get their book back.
The Sun Journal article, written by Christopher Williams, hilariously recounts some of the courtroom drama. Hilarious to me anyhow:
As much as I disagree with Karkos' position on this book (I am decidedly against book banning of almost any kind), I have to respect her gumption. We are a culture that seems to admire civil disobedience only when we have the clarity of hindsight, when history proves the act noble. In the present, acts of civil disobedience take true courage, a focused purpose, and absolute conviction of one's beliefs. Though I find humor in the way she faced down a judge and refused to hand over a book, I also realize that it's not an easy thing to do.
According to a follow-up article in the Sun Journal, the city of Lewiston has given up their demands to get the book back and are requesting a $100 fine. So Karkos will not be jailed over her refusal to hand over the book, but in my opinion, that she was willing to is something to admire.
A friend recently sent me a link to an article from the Sun Journal of Maine, detailing the story of JoAn Karkos, 64, who refused to return a book she had checked out from the Lewiston library after determining that it was inappropriate for children. The book in question? It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health by Robie H. Harris. The contents of the book seem self-explanatory, but in fairness I think the customer comments on the book's Amazon page perfectly capture the disparity of opinions over the book's contents and why there might be cause for some objection.
Unfortunately for Karkos, who first attempted to buy the book before refusing to return it, this is not a legal means to removing it permanently from the library. So the city took her to court to get their book back.
The Sun Journal article, written by Christopher Williams, hilariously recounts some of the courtroom drama. Hilarious to me anyhow:
[Judge] Stanfill ruled that Karkos had violated the library's policy and ordered her to return the book. The judge asked Karkos where the book was.Karkos, it appears, was prepared to go to jail to protect the children of Lewiston from the contents of that book. According to the article, Karkos admitted under cross-examination that she was informed in a letter by Library Director Rick Speer how to formally challenge the book, but in her words, "I knew I didn't stand a chance."
"I have it in my possession," Karkos said. She paused, then repeated that general answer each time the judge pressed her. Finally, Karkos said she had the book with her.
"Then return it right now," Stanfill said.
"I'm going to hang onto the book, your honor," Karkos said. Stanfill advised Karkos she could be held in contempt of court if she refused to comply with a court order.
"Please return the book," the judge said.
"Your honor, I cannot return the book," Karkos said after a pause.
"I am ordering that book be returned today," Stanfill said. She told Karkos she would have to stay in the courtroom until she gave up the book.
As much as I disagree with Karkos' position on this book (I am decidedly against book banning of almost any kind), I have to respect her gumption. We are a culture that seems to admire civil disobedience only when we have the clarity of hindsight, when history proves the act noble. In the present, acts of civil disobedience take true courage, a focused purpose, and absolute conviction of one's beliefs. Though I find humor in the way she faced down a judge and refused to hand over a book, I also realize that it's not an easy thing to do.
According to a follow-up article in the Sun Journal, the city of Lewiston has given up their demands to get the book back and are requesting a $100 fine. So Karkos will not be jailed over her refusal to hand over the book, but in my opinion, that she was willing to is something to admire.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
The Banned Book List - A Meme Thingy
Two of my favorite reading/writing blogs, Stusplace and Tripping Toward Lucidity, recently posted this list of books that have been banned in one time or place. I found the list very intriguing, as it is simply a list and provides no information about where or when each book was once banned. In searching for the information to match the list (which I did not find easily enough) I was yet again reminded that book banning is not a thing of the past, but is ongoing.
If you're interested in current book banning a good place to follow issues of ongoing censorship is with the National Coalition Against Censorship.
That said, while I don't support censorship of books, I think we need to do more than read banned books. I think we need to recognize the power of language in shaping and defining our world, and we need to engage in ongoing dialogue about how difficult ideas and powerful language is taught in our schools and how it affects our communities.
It's one thing to make a sweeping statement that a book should never be banned from schools, and it's another thing to actually engage the mother who's concerned about how reading the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn will affect her child, or to discuss with a holocaust survivor the banning of a holocaust denial book. I think the discussions that these books can promote are just as important as the reading of the books themselves.
Here is the list with the books that I have read listed in bold:
#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
It's also possible I've read portions of some of the philosophers included here, Kant, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, but since I can't remember specifically, I'll consider them unread. Perhaps they're worthy of a revisit.
If you're interested in current book banning a good place to follow issues of ongoing censorship is with the National Coalition Against Censorship.
That said, while I don't support censorship of books, I think we need to do more than read banned books. I think we need to recognize the power of language in shaping and defining our world, and we need to engage in ongoing dialogue about how difficult ideas and powerful language is taught in our schools and how it affects our communities.
It's one thing to make a sweeping statement that a book should never be banned from schools, and it's another thing to actually engage the mother who's concerned about how reading the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn will affect her child, or to discuss with a holocaust survivor the banning of a holocaust denial book. I think the discussions that these books can promote are just as important as the reading of the books themselves.
Here is the list with the books that I have read listed in bold:
#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
It's also possible I've read portions of some of the philosophers included here, Kant, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, but since I can't remember specifically, I'll consider them unread. Perhaps they're worthy of a revisit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
