J is for (Books About) Justice #atozchallenge

For A to Z 2018, my theme is Books About ____. If you’re stopping by from your own A to Z blog, feel free to leave a link. If you need help with how to do that, you can look here.

If you’re someone looking to read a lot of great blogs, here’s the link for the A to Z challenge.

I love a good crime thriller. Bonus points if it probes questions of right and wrong, of justice vs. law. (Because sometimes those things aren’t the same.) Here’s a list of some books about justice that I love.

To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (literary): I only read this a few years ago, and I’m so mad that my school didn’t require it. It’s a fantastic story about the child of a lawyer, and how she follows the case of a black man accused of raping a young woman. It’s got all those interesting layers of questions about right and wrong, the way people’s assumptions influence how they think about the world, all filtered through the eyes of an interesting child. And it’s actually enjoyable to read.

A Time To Kill, by John Grisham (crime thriller): When his 10-year-old daughter is raped by white men and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be justice, Carl Lee (a black man) kills them. Everyone hates pedophiles, and so it’s easy for most of us to understand why a father would kill the animals who hurt his daughter like that. This book is a fascinating thrill ride, complete with interesting drama both in and out of the courtroom. It made me think about what justice looks like in a situation like this, and if justice even exists.

Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow (crime thriller): The movie was good, but the book was better. Rusty is trying to solve the mystery of who killed Carolyn, the coworker he was having an affair with. When the affair comes out, he’s accused of the murder. The twist at the end was amazing. I read this book as a teenager, and I still think about it from time to time.

In Death books, by JD Robb (sci-fi crime thriller): This is a 40+ book series, starting with Naked In Death. It’s 2059, and Eve Dallas is a homicide cop in New York City. She hunts down bad guys and sometimes dispenses her own brand of justice. Each book is a self-contained “murder of the week” along with amazing character development and often interesting subplots about Dallas’s friends and family. She has a rigid definition of right and wrong, and it’s always interesting to see her go up against other characters, both personally and professionally, who have more flexible morals. While you don’t have to start at the beginning, I definitely would. It’s fun to watch how Dallas grows and changes.

I really like crime novels and crime shows, so this list could go on and on and on. But I made myself keep it relatively short. What books about justice do you love?

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Banned Books Week!

This week, September 25- October 1, is banned books week.

There are a lot of reasons books get banned, but what it all boils down to is that something offends someone.  Usually they’re big themes, like language, sexuality, racial or ethnic tensions, violence, religion, or addiction.  But the one thing that all banned books have in common is that someone, somewhere, found value in what the author had to say.

I’m anti-censorship.  I think that the only kind of censorship that should exist is personal censorship.  By that, I mean that if you don’t want to read it (or don’t want your minor children to read it), then don’t.  Most schools, even if a books is assigned, will allow a child to read an alternate if their parent objects.  But don’t negate my reality, or what I want to learn about the world, by demanding it be pulled out of schools, taken off the shelf at libraries, unwelcome in a bookstore.

Provocative themes make us think.  They expand the world, get us talking.

I haven’t liked every book I’ve ever read.  Some of them have even offended me.  But that doesn’t mean I want to control someone else’s exposure to it.  In reality, we’re more and more exposed to all kinds of themes and content.  On the internet, on TV, on billboards, through overheard conversations in a restaurant, on social media.

The upside of that is that there are all these wonderful ideas floating around, being shared.

The downside of that is that there are some offensive ideas floating around too.

I believe in balance, and that we can’t have one without the other.  In the interest of being able to obtain all those wonderful ideas, I’ll deal with the ones I don’t like too.

Just because it offends me, doesn’t mean if will offend you.

And vice versa.

Exposure to a variety of ideas encourages independent thinking, synthesis, discussion, and sometimes debate.

Let’s not lose sight of that.

Here’s a link to the most challenged books of 2015.

Here’s a link to the most challenged books of 2000- 2009.

What do you think about challenged books and censorship?