Revision Hell, Book Recommendations, Library News

And a boozey pound cake recipe

Although I didn’t get much done on the writing front, I have a lot of news to share about writing and book bans, plus a yummy (boozey) recipe. 

I’m still in revision mode, a task that is starting to feel never ending. I did manage to send out four submissions this week (I don’t want to get too far behind on the

100 Rejections Club

).

While I was getting those four submissions done, I found the best line in a (contest) submission guideline:

“There is no limit to the number of entries per person, but this is not bingo, and more submissions do not necessarily translate into higher chances of winning.”

And I judged poems, essays, flash fiction, and sci-fi/fantasy for the Scholastic Writing Awards. That’s all the writerly work I could manage, but I am anticipating a lot of company over the next 10 days, so I’ve been cleaning and baking.

Having my cake

I tried this Irish Cream Pound Cake from the NYT cooking section. I love pound cake and make them periodically—cream cheese pound cake, lime pound cake. My aunt, who recently moved from Pennsylvania to California is coming over for a St. Patrick’s Day dinner with my sister and her partner. I figured it was a good opportunity to try this dessert. More of the icing drizzled onto the plate than I expected, but I’ll scoop it up.

ChatGPT

I love the Washington Post’s Ron Charles’ weekly newsletter” Book Club.” This week, he tested ChatGPT with some questions about literature. The results were hilarious. His conclusion: “ChatGPT is that kid in your seventh grade class who claimed to know everything about sex but had never actually gone on a date.” 

Reading recommendations

I read a lot about religious cults because I think a lot about spiritual abuse. I stumbled upon these reading recommendations from Kristen Bird—cults and mysteries. What’s not to love?

This week, Tracy Hahn-Burkett wrote in the Writer Unboxed newsletter about dystopias. 

“In the category, “It was fiction when she wrote it” – Red Clocks, Leni Zumas. Published in 2018 as dystopian fiction, here’s the beginning of the back cover copy of my edition: “Welcome to America. Abortion is illegal, in vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo.” Ahem. Though it would have been so easy for Zumas to get preachy, she avoids that by homing in on the stories of the four characters central to the story—four women in different places in life, facing different reproductive circumstances in a society that doesn’t permit them control over their own persons. Message delivered.”

I loved this book as well. I wonder if I didn’t review it for School Library Lady because I was self-censoring(?) Self-censorship is much on my mind lately because the more external censorship happens, the more one censors oneself in selecting books for teens. I did, however, review a similar book back in 2012 that I think is pertinent to the moment: When She Woke. If you haven’t read it, you should. 

Library and book ban news

The biggest news this week is ALA’s report on the uptick in book challenges and bans.

American Library Association reports record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023

Public Libraries Saw 92 Percent Increase In Number of Titles Targeted for Censorship Over The Previous Year

CHICAGO — The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA). The new numbers released today show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles* in schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022, when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship. 

That Ron DeSantis is blaming others for the outcome of his book banning policies has been in the news for a few weeks. But this crazy proposal to blame principals is new. I also thought it was interesting that it’s news in the Guardian as well as The Irish Times. 

The Guardian: Ron DeSantis’s next chapter in book bans backlash? Blame someone else

Now, another group has joined those in his crosshairs: school principals. A proposed new rule by an education standards committee led by a DeSantis loyalist seeks to impose penalties on administrators deemed to have obstructed the state’s view of what students should be reading.

The rule was pitched by Randy Kosec, head of the professional practices office that investigates educator misconduct, earlier this month after the governor requested officials to “fine-tune” the process by which books are challenged in schools.

It would introduce possible sanctions or other penalties to principals who prevent, or allow others to prevent, students’ access to unspecified “educational materials”. …

Parents’ representatives also criticized the rule that targets principals as a continuation of what they see as a quest to undermine the public school system.

“It’s vague, and it’s hard to not believe that’s the way it’s intended to be,” said Damaris Allen, executive director of the Tampa-based advocacy group Families for Strong Public Schools.

“That was brought up in the workshop, if a principal will be penalized if they remove a book that is deemed age appropriate, then what is age appropriate?

“I sat in all those committees as those laws were being passed, and person after person said ‘nobody knows what books you’re meaning to pull out here’. You go to the training, which says err on the side of caution, which means you’re going to have anticipatory censorship, pulling away books so that you don’t get in trouble.

“What’s hardest is it all distracts from the fact that we have been chronically underfunded, many of our districts are in spaces where they’re having to pass an additional millage or sales tax just to get their schools decently funded, and that ultimately harms kids.

“While we’re talking about these things, we’re not dealing with those issues. We have a mental health crisis with students, we haven’t fully processed what happened with the pandemic, and we’re not able to address those issues because we’re so busy constantly reviewing books.”

(The same article is in the Irish Times under a different title: Ron DeSantis looks for scapegoat as book ban legislation brings backlash)

In case you don’t think it happens in California:

Redlands Unified School District has heated discussion of book banning. (In the video recording of the meeting, the discussion starts at about the 4 minute mark.)

In the novel I’m querying, the main character has her classroom library removed in a nefarious way. And here is an article about that happening IRL:

North Fort Myers High School teacher resigns over book ban

“Mike Andoscia, a North Fort Myers High School teacher who had earned commendations as a Golden Apple Teacher of Distinction in the district, resigned from his job in January after he said he refused to cover up more than 600 of the books in the library of his classroom that were undergoing district review. At the time of his resignation, Andoscia was also under investigation for what he believes was the way he addressed another controversial state law governing the use of pronouns for students in the classroom.

In January, on the day after Martin Luther King Day, Andoscia arrived at his classroom in the morning to find that all of the books in his classroom had been removed. They had been taken to the filing room and he was told by the school’s principal to take them home.”

THE BOOKSELLERS’ REVOLT has some nice background on how book challenges and removal went from local and thoughtful to what we see today.

“Something else had changed, too: Historically, book challenges were quiet, deliberate, local affairs, involving formal procedures and committee reviews. Books suspected to be objectionable remained on shelves until a final decision. Now, challenges that lead to books being pulled are quick, loud, ideologically driven, and often centered on select passages divorced from context. Many books are being yanked from shelves immediately upon being challenged.”

'A lot of confusion': Booksellers decry book ban laws like Texas HB 900 during SXSW 2024

The Legislature in May passed House Bill 900, or the READER Act, which forbids schools to purchase books deemed "sexually explicit" and requires them to buy from sellers who rate their books according to new state guidelines. Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 900 into law in June and the law was set take effect in September, but portions of it have remained on hold because of a lawsuit tied up in appeals court.

BookPeople, other Texas book shops and industry groups brought the lawsuit in July over concerns that the law infringes on businesses' free speech rights, is unreasonably costly to comply with and is unreasonably vague.

“This law has sown a lot of confusion in our communities about what they can and can't do, and it's already creating self-censorship,” Rejsek said. “Schools and librarians tend to err on the side of safety if they think something is against the law.”

They’re Dismantling Higher Education, Too: Book Censorship News, March 8, 2024

“But as much as the rhetoric has been about “protecting the kids,” it is very much not about the kids at all. If it were, then DEI departments or programs at public universities — where students are near-universally no longer minors — would not need to be disbanded. Texas outlawed DEI programs at all public universities, as did several other states. In Florida, the dismantling of higher education has an incubator program at New College. Last year, the state’s governor implemented new leadership at the public liberal arts school, which included installing completely unqualified political agitators to the institution’s advisory board. Students and faculty reported on the chaos happening in the school to begin the 2023-24 academic year, and even more recently, the institution saw sanctions leveraged against it by the American Association of University Professors for standards violations. Only 12 other institutions have ever been given these sanctions over the last 30 years.”

Some good news

Rainbow Book Bus Launches Nationwide Tour to Combat LGBTQ+ Book Bans

The LA County Library now offers Connect & Go Hotspot Loans, portable hotspots, available to borrow for up to 6 weeks at all of its libraries. Great idea for equal access. 

What I’m Reading

NYT “Read like the Wind” newsletter by Joumana Khatib reviews older books recommended Crudo by Olivia Laing, so I picked up a copy at the library.

Also recommended was The Meursault Investigation, by Kamel Daoud (Translated by John Cullen), a book I loved and reviewed it here. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!