I decided to take one day a week to pass on all the links I find, because, seriously this is getting more and more – the internet’s just too big. Or, to be more precise, my reader’s getting to big. So, from now on, Wednesday will be link day. Enjoy!

Sometimes I’m afraid that I’m becoming a forty-something house wife on the inside. Then I have to keep touching my piercings and look at my tattoo and remind me that I’m much too cool for that. Another such moment occurred, when I read this here: A group of parents are concerned about the pornographic contents of some young adults books. They want to form a board to read the books and – if they find it too graphic in its depiction – want to apply a label to the book so that parents have to give their permission when kids want to check those books out.
Now, here’s the thing. This system sounds pretty fair (except that I would closely look at the board and who’s on it) and they don’t want to ban anything, but enable parents to protect their kids from contents they don’t find suitable (which is fine, as they don’t want to protect other kids but their own and leave parents the choice for their kids, although I’m afraid that there’s too much unnecessary protection going on). [And that’s where I feel like this middle-aged house wife, nodding my head in agreement.] Where I see the problem with that, is that I don’t think that young adults book are that (porno-)graphic. Someone reads those before publishing and I’m pretty sure they scrutinise them closely so that nothing too bad’s in there. And as for this:

Melka called the inclusion of the books “a public scandal” and said the purpose for certain books to include detailed descriptions of love-making acts and sex “is to make it easy for readers to fantasize the described actions, and in doing so, bring out sexual feelings.”

Well, yeah. That’s the point. You’re right. I just don’t think that fantasising and sexuality is anything bad and teenagers don’t need to be protected from it, but helped along their development. Books can do that (if they’re good).
So, I guess, I passed becoming conservative once more…

Along the same lines, I read this: There’s an organisation, who sends out books to prisoners, but they have to edit them (remove sex scenes etc) or else the prison censors wont let them through.
I understand that you don’t need to make prisoners more anxious than they already are, but couldn’t reading about stuff have a cathartic effect? Don’t know… I’m just deeply uncomfortable with editing books like that. [But I love the idea of this organisation. Great stuff.]

Continuing with great stuff: Brad Meltzer, of Identity Crisis fame, just wrote “The Book of Lies”, which comes with its own soundtrack. Really cool idea. Difficult for readers like me though – I usually read on the subway and wherever I have to wait. It’s really rare for me to sit at home and just read. [Though it happens more often these days.] But a mp3-player can take care of that, so it’s fine.

Turning to a bit more laughing matter, here we have the five worst disasters from disaster movies.

Movies… There’s loads of that stuff. Right now, I’ll limit myself to “Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women“.

Which sets up the tone for this link, which basically left me absolutely flabbergasted (not the post itself but the post it is a reaction to): Middle Aged Women: The Convention Horror.

And now, to enter the meta level: Here’s a link to a link round-up about movies, the film industry and the Bechdel-Test (aka Mo Movie Measure). And two clicks further on, there’s this guide to writing good female lead characters.