Part two: “Please don’t burn my Book!”

By Keith Fisher

A few weeks ago I started a two-part blog. Since part one only drew one comment, perhaps I need to spice it up a bit.

I was drawn into an argument at work the other night. The subject was homosexuality and whether is should be shown in an LDS novel. The comment was this:
“You mean a person can’t show real life in a book?”

Do I have your attention yet? Or are you yawning with anticipation, preparing to skip over my thoughts to laugh at the great humor of C.L. Beck? I don’t blame you, but since you’ve read this far, you might as well read on.

I was going to include quotes from JK Rowling, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others but in the interest of shortening the subject and finishing the promised two-part blog, let me just say:

I know there will be a time when my children read other works, written by authors who for whatever reason, find it necessary to use language or describe situations that are not needed to tell the story. When they do, I hope they will be able to understand, without embracing those lifestyles but for now I will privately ban certain books in my family.

To sum up, I would never publicly ban a book. Banning only increases sales for undesirable literature and burning a book is so adversarial to me; I would be tempted to take retribution if I witnessed a book burning.

There is some bad Literature out there. There's a lot of good also. My suggestion is to leave the bad alone, and keep your standards, both in reading and writing. Try to convince other writers to write good stuff, then someday everyone will write books that we wouldn’t be afraid to let our children read.