"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward." - FDR

There's some very troubling stuff in that book.

WE MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN!

Good procedure to remove a book. Number one. Read the whole book. Everyone on the committee to remove must read the book. This stopped a lot of challenges.

They aren’t called “Know-Nothings” for nothing.

Where? What did I miss?

Or maybe my reading comprehension was just really poor.

There are two affairs in The Great Gatsby: Tom with Myrtle, the gas station owner's wife, and Gatsby with Daisy.

and neither is a description of a kiss. It's got to be more explicit than that. Well, maybe some fundamentalist Christian might see the acknowledgement of the existence of affairs as a sexual reference, but fundamentalist Muslims don't: a new edition of The Great Gatsby appeared in Iran in 2000: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X6K2BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=%22great+gatsby%22+%22iran%22

Let them think CAT on a HOT TIN ROOF is a children's animal book, and especially HUCK FINN written by Mark Twain is a river navigation book

This is absolutely disgusting. I only had a couple challenges in my career and won them both. During Banned Book Week every year, I would display every banned book that I had in my library.

Banned Books Week. Loved getting into it with the idiots. "What qualifies you to decide what I can or cannot read? Have you ever read your bible? What about the sex and violence in that?"

Animal Farm and 1984 and see what is truly obscene!!!!!! Then they might compare those books to how Washington is being run and ban all those RepubliCONS for obscenity........

First, book burning. Next, cremations.

"Next, cremations. " - The Middle ages. Inquisition. Burned at the stake.

They didn't even have to wait for you to be dead first.

Most, if not all of them are available in electronic format for free.

The problem with school boards are elections are inevitably off cycle in elections where nobody votes except local churches. The result is you get people who still literally want people to live in the Stone Age.

their community of that satanic filth. I called the pastor to thank him. After all, one actually had to purchase the books in order to have them to burn. Of course, I also called the Fire Marshall and city permits. Oh, dear.

However that moron was from a ruby red part of the state. Eastern New Mexico is pretty much west Texas.

Like all good books, it changes with the reader. If for nothing else, the mention of "the hot whips of panic" and the closet of shirts that could make one cry, make it worthwhile.

I read banned books!

Haven't they already learned about most of those things from the Palin family?

The Palin family lives in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

to a story about the glittering rich in their east coast enclaves, even though they likely have some experience of seeing rich kids skate on criminal mischief while they and their friends have juvie records for next to nothing. I know when I read it in junior high, the main thing that got me through it was knowing what happened to those assholes in 1929.

Angelou's book is another matter. It's a more universal story because even kids who grow up in milk & cookies families have friends that don't. Yes, the subject matter is horrific, but kids already know about a lot of that stuff by the time they get to high school. I sure as hell did.

One thing about non urban Alaska, people do read during those long, dark winters. This is good advertising for both books and sales should skyrocket. There is nothing like a bunch of prudish, pickle faced book banners to spur interest in good reading.

I'd suggest replacing Gatsby with "The Jungle." Much of that book is relevant today, the working class getting fucked over by bosses, banks, and the legal system as USDA inspection of our meat has been scaled back to nearly nothing. We're not quite at the floor sweepings, cigar butts, and severed limbs in the sausage yet, but just continue the process of the last 20 years and we will be.

and sort of sold his soul to become rich by illegal means because of a hopeless dream of happiness through being rich enough to win Daisy. He wasn't an asshole, he was a romantic. A phony, but a phony for a reason. The old money rich are clearly all asshole phonies with no redeeming qualities.

For me the most poignant part was when Gatsby's father shows Nick his son's notebook from when he was young with lists of schedules and goals and the father says, "Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had some resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I et like a hog once, and I beat him for it." But the only way Gatsby could get ahead was by criminal activity.

I grew up in a small town across the country from the glittering rich in their east coast enclaves and made self-improvement lists in my late teens, wanted to be sophisticated and worldly. To like jazz, know about French food and wines, foreign languages, play tennis and be sporty, collected reading lists like Columbia University's Great Books, lists of foreign films to see. Everything except for the reading lists were a failure (a couple of years ago I finally had to throw out my ancient copy of Adler's "How to Read a Book" and its reading list.) Gave up trying to be sophisticated. I could never be Gatsby. This is relatable for some.

He didn't care who she was, he just wanted to own what she was.

Kids so far removed from that kind of life aren't going to relate to it. It's better suited to aspirational suburbia.

Then again, my mother came from serious money (mostly gone in the Depression, thank any deity that claims credit) and I did grow up speaking the language. I just rejected it utterly. That likely colored my own perception of the book, although its premise that the rich are different is spot on.

From the article cited in the Op"

Many Alaskans live there, and move to live there, because........Freedom! From big gob'mint telling them what to do. But then can flip 180 with that opinion if its about censoring books that might taint their right wing sensibilities. Not to mention the blatant hypocrisy of Republicans getting their shorts in a knot over this writing while at the same time lavishing praise on a President who acts and talks the way he does in the present day.

She'll get on it. Maya Angelou was her bestie.