Protests like this never fail to sadden me. I cannot wrap my head around the idea of banning books for the supposed audacity of showing all facets of human life and behaviour – as though not reading about the bad parts of ourselves will somehow insulate us from those bad parts in real life. It astonishes me that we are so eager to ensure that kids, even the college bound ones, never encounter anything bad or upsetting.

I was thinking (and fuming) over this whole book banning nonsense last night as I was getting ready to sleep. I loaded up my toothbrush with some Colgate and grabbed the copy of Fahrenheit 451 ( amusingly, this Bradbury classic has a Lexile rating of 451), from the toilet tank, and opened it to a random page (though now, it hardly feels random at all).

This is what I read (Faber to Guy Montag):

“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless…”

A little further on, Guy and Faber have the following exchange:

 “That’s the good part of dying; when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.”
“There, you’ve said an interesting thing,” laughed Faber, “without having read it!”
“Are things like that in books? But it came off the top of my mind!”
“All the better. You didn’t fancy it up for me or anyone, even yourself.”

Faber hits it right on the head.

I think this is why people hate and fear books like Beloved, and all the other books they ban; these books show us as we really are. A good book doesn’t “fancy up” human behaviour or thought, it shows it, warts and all. As humans, we are capable of acts of great kindness, empathy, sympathy, bravery and outright heroism. But, we are also capable of being miserable, selfish, petty, murderous and cowardly – and these traits, these bad things about ourselves, about us a species, are mixed in with the good and finer things about us, and they cannot, and should not, be separated.

It is my belief that when we ban books, we are trying to cast out the worst parts of ourselves, and it’s a strange and wasted effort. I don’t suggest we fully embrace the darker aspects of ourselves by murdering and stealing with wild abandon, but I do think that when we try to deny these parts of our human nature via book banning, we’re just giving into another bad thing within ourselves: we’re refusing to learn anything about what it means to be human, we’re being stubborn and denying that the bad things depicted in books often come from the good lives we endeavour to lead.

Beloved, for example, is based on a true story, and I feel that whatever embellishments or liberties Tony Morrison might have made or taken with the actual story, her telling is a window into that first story, a piece of our history – actual, emotional, and spiritual – demanding to be seen and heard. I’ll never have to go through the things that Sethe goes through. I’ll never flee slavery with my children, and I’ll never be driven by despair and fear to kill my own child rather than see her taken back into slavery. But through Tony Morrison’s words, I can read about it. And because she writes so well, because her writing is so accessible, I can feel it – the anger and fear that might drive a mother to keep her child out of the hands of slave owners, anger toward the very foundations of thought that allowed slavery to happen in the first place, the way in which such a life and desperate act must alter the mind and degrade the soul; how open it leaves a person to being haunted – actually or mentally – by their deeds.

When I read the book for the first time in university, these were some of the thoughts I had: the character of Sethe was driven to terrible things by her circumstances. I believe that she is essentially a good person, an innocent person who was stripped of her rights and freedom as a human being, and in being denied the same rights as her “masters”, she gave her child the only freedom she could provide, in the only way she could think of in that moment. Do I agree with her actions? Hard to say from the safety and freedom of the 21st century. But whether I agree with her actions or not isn’t the only point of the story. Do I feel for her? Do I sympathize and empathize, and wish that I could reach through the pages and rescue her? Did the story make me think about the darker moments of our history? Did it make me examine my own beliefs, and poke around in the deep and dusty corners of myself rather than ignoring them? Yes. Very much so; and that is the point of reading any good book.

Books should not be banned on the basis of being difficult, or because of the awful and uncomfortable truths they may contain. Books are about us, about our lives, about our history, about how high we can rise, and how far we can fall. We need to read these things, we need the experience of being human in all circumstances – and especially those which we are unlikely to encounter. We need to think critically while we imagine ourselves in the character’s shoes. Books are a safe way to experience everything, they are a great way to learn about ourselves and others. The experiences we read about may even better prepare us for having to go through them ourselves.

We must all be allowed to read without restrictions so that we can develop emotionally, morally and creatively. These are worthy goals that reading can help us accomplish.

This is what books are for. This is why we cannot ban them.

After years of failure to truly eat better, exercise more, stay in touch with people better, and all the other fruitless promises I made myself every new year, I gave up on trying. My reasoning was that if I hadn’t already made those changes in my life, then a change in the calendar year wasn’t going to suddenly give me motivation – I had to really want it for myself, otherwise I was just setting myself up for disappointment.

Yet, here I am, in the early days of a new year, contemplating making some resolutions.

These resolutions? To write more and draw more snarky stick people to share with the world. I’ve made these promises loads of times throughout the year and not kept it – you can tell by the total lack of recent posts or Stick Note Fridays – and I’ve often asked myself why I don’t blog more and draw more, and I’ve been asked that by the few people who were disappointed that I stopped.

I haven’t got any really good reasons, but here are a few anyway:

1. I’ve been working on a novel. I’m struggling a little with it a the moment, but it’s taken up most of my days for quite a long time now.
2. I stopped caring about blogging. I wrote the odd book review, sure, but mostly I did it to see if anyone was still reading. They weren’t (and who can blame them?). In this case, I let my silly little ego get its feelings hurt because no one was reading the stuff I wasn’t writing. Dumb? Yes, yes it is.
3. I don’t take my drawings the least bit seriously. You know, to the point where I don’t draw them because, what the hell, they’re just stick people, right? My husband has informed me that he thinks I’m throwing away my talent at drawing just because it’s not high art. He’s right, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing – despite being told by him, and several other people, that I could really make something of those drawings.

So what’s my point, you ask?

I want to change that. I know it’s going to be a bloody hard uphill struggle to overcome that negative voice in the back of my head – I call her The Insidious Bitch- that keeps whispering, “Keep your day job, honey, you’re gonna need it.” (never mind that my “day job” has been working on a novel, and I’ve not been paid a cent for working at it).

So – and you must pardon the crude language – fuck you, Insidious Bitch. You can whisper your taunts and doubts all you like, you can scream them in my ear if you want, but this is the year that I fight back. 2012 is mine, and you are going down, back into that dark little filth-hole from whence you came.

You see, you awful, stroppy cow, I’ve been given the gift of time and freedom by my wonderful husband. He’s green-lighted this novel writing business from the get-go, and you’ve been holding me back. He’s supported, praised and giggled at all my silly drawings too, and I let you talk me out of them.

Well, I’m finally angry enough to do something about it. I’m not going to stand with my back against the door anymore, hoping like hell I can keep you out. I’m going to let you in, and then stick something sharp and stabby into your heart.

Watch out; I’m angry, and I’ve learned to tread lightly and carry a big sword.

The titular character of Benjamin Skyhammer is a guy that pretty much everyone can identify with on some level: he doesn’t fit into society very well, he hates his day job (but loves his hobby), and he spends a good deal of time dreaming about the day when things will change for him. However, it’s all the reasons behind why he’s so easy to relate to, that make Benjamin Skyhammer stand out.

Skyhammer lives on Pingala, a world where everyone uses magic in their day to day lives – everyone except for him. Born without magic, Skyhammer is looked upon as something less than fully human. At their best, his fellow humans go out of their way to avoid any sort of contact with him; at their worst they openly taunt him (at rather low point in his personal history, a group of kids turned him into a snake for a lark).

As Keeper of the Retrograph Vault, a job he was forced into by virtue of being the only one able to get into the vault in the first place, he’s expected to be grateful and happy with such a cushy and easy job. Given that his predecessor spent most of his time as Keeper completely intoxicated, most people think the job is more than Skyhammer deserves as a magic-less outcast. Skyhammer, however, feels the job is a sort of boring punishment and is not content to sit on his laurels and take the easy way out. Instead, he and his best friend – his only friend really – Higgins, (a clever young lady, proficient in wizard level magic) spend the majority of their time hunting down the one Relic – a glove – that could bestow magical powers on Skyhammer and finally make him equal to everyone else.

During his various quests for this glove, Skyhammer finds other Relics and sells them as a source of income. This income goes towards paying informants who are helping him track the location of the Relic. When Skyhammer finally gets a solid lead on the whereabouts of the glove, he and Higgins are caught up in a race against time to get to it before someone else does

Without giving too much away, things go horribly awry and the fallout sends Skyhammer and Higgins on an adventure that ends up becoming far more complicated than either of them could ever have dreamed. Unexplained murders, political intrigues, and battles become the norm as they brave both beautiful and harsh landscapes to find the truth and to fulfill Skyhammer’s only desire. As might be expected, Skyhammer learns a few things about himself and the people around him along the way. Finding the truth, and seeking out your heart’s desire is hard, and sometimes frightening, work – but the rewards are great.

There are many things in this book to interest readers,  and of all the interesting things in it, I was most intrigued by the concept of the Retrograph.

Retrographs are pictures that are taken every minute of an individuals life – picture having a sort of camera as a third eye that takes a snapshot of one moment in time, every minute you’re awake. These Retrographs can be viewed at anytime – but only by the person to whom they belong. No one knows why the Retrographs exist, or for what purpose (those answers died with the ancients), they simply are – and every human, magic or not, has their whole life captured by this inner-eye. I have to admit, if we had anything like that now, I’d want the option of a delete button. After all, who’d want to look back on all the times you brushed your teeth or went to the bathroom (or worse!)?

I also enjoyed the wide variety in races (everything from humans to amoebas that like to knit) and the interesting technology too (flying carpets, magic slates, whole cities that float); it’s a world that is nothing like our own, but its inhabitants make it feel familiar and comfortable. The names of some of the inns that Skyhammer and Higgins pass through gave me the giggles as did the stories the locals feed the tourists regarding the name of their town, Four Hills (all I have to say is “conjoined princesses” – you’ll see).

The story itself moves along at a pretty quick pace. There were a few spots where I felt it went a little too fast, and the landscape, people and conversations went by in a bit of hurry. I’m a greedy reader, I like detail and back story (in the right measure). And there were some questions that I felt were not answered (perhaps the answers I wanted were deliberately not given to add an air of mystery – but I felt a little disappointed at not being let in on it)  and I must also be a little bit voyeuristic, as I would have liked more inner-dialogue – especially from Skyhammer – or at least more description of how the characters were feeling about certain events.

The only other thing that gave me a moment’s pause while reading, were the two instances where I felt that Benjamin Skyhammer acted wildly out of character. He generally seems like a fairly sweet sort of guy – the kind you take home to mother – even a little goofy and helpless at times. I had a hard time reconciling that Skyhammer to the two instances in the story (I could tell you which ones, but I don’t want to, a) spoil the plot or b) put ideas in your head about how you should react before you’ve even read it.) Let’s just say that I couldn’t (and still can’t) see someone of his character doing such things.

All in all, The Adventures of Benjamin Skyhammer is a good, fun read set in an interesting world that you’ll find yourself wishing you could visit for real.