Results are out! Find what you need...fast. Get quick advice or join the chat
Hey there Sign in to join this conversationNew here? Join for free

Were you ever banned from reading certain books/authors as a child?

This thread is sponsored by:
Announcements Posted on
    • 2 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    Jokes, I read the Dice Man when I was 10 or 11. Banned in several countries until the 1980s, the book contains the following among other images long forgotten:
    - a woman forces the main character to masturbate and lick his own semen.
    - the main character rapes his friend's wife and has sex with a nymphomaniac patient.
    - he organises a depersonalisation experiment where people act in roles and have threesomes.
    - a quasi-religious club is established, observed by psychologists: the main activity is darkroom orgies with strangers.
    - the book ends with a woman whipping a paedophile to death while the main character ****s her.

    I don't think I was that perturbed and certainly wasn't banned from reading it. Nor would I ban any book from a child.
    • 2 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    I think the worst thing (in the sense of, bad for me in terms of what's in the books) I read as a kid was Darren Shan's series of books, which I absolutely loved.
    • 3 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    (Original post by fleetwood)
    Primary school banned us from reading 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time', but that didn't stop us :P
    Why on earth would it be considered unsuitable?? Maybe that was just to make you read it
    • 97 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    (Original post by SoulfulBoy)
    What book was that one? lol At 9 years old I did not know what virginity meant lmao.
    I remember watching The Simpsons when I was little, and Skinner was making a confession to everyone where he said "I am a virgin" and everyone gasped. I asked my parents 'what's a virgin?' and they told me 'someone who's never done something before.'
    'So I'd be a virgin at...like...mountain climbing?'
    'Aye.'
    'So what's principal Skinner a virgin at?'
    'Dunno'

    • 1 follower
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    My mum saw me reading Georgia Nicolson and because she saw the word "pants" in the title she hid it without telling me! I didn't even realise until years later why that book mysteriously disappeared :P

    Other than that though I was encouraged to read whatever I enjoyed!
    • 2 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    (Original post by SoulfulBoy)
    What book was that one? lol At 9 years old I did not know what virginity meant lmao.
    We didn't either until we had read that book!
    • 2 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    Never been banned from reading a book. Then again, I don't tend to like reading gritty books, so it was never really an issue.
    • 20 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    My parents have always encouraged me to read ahead of my age, so I've never been banned from reading any books. However, an ex-friend's mum is incredibly Christian, and my friend was banned from reading Harry Potter because "Only Jesus can perform miracles like magic" - and yet she was encouraged to read the James Bond books with all their sexytime and stuff.
    • 4 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    (Original post by ForgettingWhatsername)
    I read the Diary of Anne Frank when I was nine, I was depressed for months :cry2: I'm glad my parents let me read everything I wanted though, at least I could always talk to them about what I'd read if it upset me. I don't see the point in shielding children from what goes on in the world, one day they'll find out anyway from their friends or from reading things in secret or just seeing it on tv, and then they might feel like they can't talk to their parents about it.
    I agree with this completely.

    My parents never banned me from reading anything; in fact, my dad often told me I read books that were too young for me.

    Except the Wasp Factory. He still won't let me read that.
    • 5 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    (Original post by blacklistmember)
    Why on earth would it be considered unsuitable?? Maybe that was just to make you read it
    Haha it had a fair bit of bad language which our primary school weren't too keen on :P but they had no choice in the matter haha
    • 7 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    No.
    • 9 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    my parents let me read whatever i wanted, and so did my teachers, letting me go to the library in the year 6 classroom and whatnot

    although my local library did impose restrictions on children holding library cards, and the sense of freedom i felt 2 years ago when i was taking out a book and they said "you're 16 now, so your card is now an adults card and you can take out whatever you want" previously if i wanted certain books, i'd have to borrow my mums card!
    • 0 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    I haven't really been banned from anything, but recently I can read anything I want, and they don't really care. I mean, once on holiday I ran out of books, and the only ones the hotel had were Mills and Boon... And I read them. I was about 9 or 10. xD
    • 0 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    I've never been banned from any specific books/authors, however my parents did ban me from reading ALL books when I was about 9. They thought I spent "too much time reading and not enough time socialising with my family" and because I read mostly fantasy books, I "would go weird in the head and get strange ideas" so they took all my books away.

    Didn't stop me at all though, it just made me read even more.
    • 3 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    No, my parents never censored what I read. I was encouraged to read and my choices were never questioned. I suspect my parents probably didn't know what the books I was reading were about.
    • 9 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    No, not that I can recall. From a young age, my parents have always been supportive of my reading and always used to stress a healthy variety of books and authors. They never used to pick and choose what I could and could not read. Indeed, most of the time, they were never even aware of what I was reading in the first place.
    • 1 follower
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    I don't remember ever being banned from reading books when I was younger. My parents are usually pretty cool about this kind of stuff and I guess the books I liked never really aroused any suspicion anyway :P

    And tbh, I used to get through something like a book every 1-3 days so I doubt my parents ever saw much of what I was reading anyway :p:
    • 10 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    (Original post by inspiration91)
    My mum saw me reading Georgia Nicolson and because she saw the word "pants" in the title she hid it without telling me! I didn't even realise until years later why that book mysteriously disappeared :P

    Other than that though I was encouraged to read whatever I enjoyed!
    My mum did that although with 'Angus, thongs and Full-frontal snogging', once i explained what it was about though she let me read it. Think i was 11 at the time Generally parents were really easy going with books and gave me enough pocket money every week to buy new ones
    • 32 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    i was allowed to read what I want - I remember finding a book on where babies come from, aged 5, in a bookshop, and reading it cover to cover whilst my dad browsed. He was aware of (and unconcerned about) what I was reading, and I don't think I fully believed that it was all true :rofl:

    On the other hand, I remember a girl from primary school whose strict Christian parents wouldn't let her read Harry Potter, because it promoted witchcraft. She went completely off the rails by 14, and had a baby at 16 :rolleyes:
    • 0 followers
    Offline

    ReputationRep:
    My school library wouldn't let me take out any Stephen King novels whilst I was "under 16". I thought that was ridiculous and took the time to let them know my thoughts on the matter!

Reply

Submit reply

Register

Thanks for posting! You just need to create an account in order to submit the post
  1. this can't be left blank
    that username has been taken, please choose another Forgotten your password?
  2. this can't be left blank
    this email is already registered. Forgotten your password?
  3. this can't be left blank

    6 characters or longer with both numbers and letters is safer

  4. this can't be left empty
    your full birthday is required
  1. By joining you agree to our Ts and Cs, privacy policy and site rules

  2. Slide to join now Processing…

Updated: May 22, 2012
New on TSR

Find out what year 11 is like

Going into year 11? Students who did it last year share what to expect.

Article updates
Useful resources

Quick link:

Unanswered books, literature & poetry threads

Groups associated with this forum:

View associated groups
Reputation gems:
You get these gems as you gain rep from other members for making good contributions and giving helpful advice.
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1926986&page=4
www.thestudentroom.co.uk
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-35
278182
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:WZOCIYDRVIETBFXZ32LOPYVJ7NJVMICB
<urn:uuid:a742ee3d-3d0f-483c-a38b-8bd72c42f793>
2014-08-30T14:42:41Z
217.27.250.165
sha1:RP6D45RDM4VYRSSTMIW5YYH6S3BXNQFW
<urn:uuid:054ec789-4c27-41c0-92e7-f1efa0362165>
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1926986&page=4
response
<urn:uuid:db7d3b4b-e391-41db-901d-85dede2b743b>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-35
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for August 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf