Your question is the best thing I've read all day. Apparently it's referencing a literal cheeseburger.

According to this person (spoilers? I haven't read the book and it's unclear whether this info is revealed before or after the line in question),

>>!It turns out that Bree was a 15-16 year-old abused homeless runaway. Riley ("the hottest boy I had ever seen, tall and blond and perfect... And his voice was so gentle, so kind") offered to get her a burger. Bree figures she knows "what he would want in exchange," but she's eaten nothing but trash for two weeks, so small-scale prostitution it is.!<

Meyer has several editors, after all; small things might slip by but if "cheeseburger of pain" managed to escape notice as an unintended typo then several people are straight-up incompetent.

No, for two reasons:

1. I feel like I should have at least read a given book before advocating for its destruction, and I've avoided all the really controversial/gross stuff out there. I've read stuff I disagreed with, but nothing so offensive that I feel it's unfit for consumption.
2. I'm fundamentally against book burning as a concept. Everyone should have the right to freedom of the press, not only because censorship pretty quickly becomes a slippery slope, but also because people don't stop having vile ideas just because they're restricted from publishing them. All restrictions do is fan the flames of a persecution complex (justified or otherwise) and hide the discussion from the rest of society.

Guess the author isn't Ukrainian themselves since Ukraine has banned Russian lit.

(Also, I've exhausted my monthly free article quota so can't read the link.)

>I don't even think any book should be banned from curriculums. I do think that books that are assigned should be appropriate to grade level,

But those are just two sides of the same coin. If you deem that Stephen King's "IT" isn't appropriate for middle schoolers, then you've "banned" it from the curriculum.

None of these "book bans" ever prohibit kids from ordering the "banned" book off Amazon or getting it from their local libraries or pirating an ebook. They're free to read what they want without any repercussions from the school. "Book bans" (despite the inflammatory language surrounding them) boil down to restricting what's on the curriculum and stocked in the school library.

>That's a bad-faith strawman running on low intelligence.

No, it's a litmus test.

Anyone who says they're against "book banning" (which is to say, not banning at all, but books being removed from school curriculum or school libraries) must be on board with any book being in said curriculum or libraries. Otherwise, if they're okay with some books being excluded based on their content, they aren't actually against "book banning" at all.

For example, when I say I am against book banning (properly understood), I mean it. I believe people should be able to sell, buy, own, and read any work of fiction, including books that I think are evil and harmful (like The Turner Diaries).

I can infer that your response means that when you said "No books should be banned," you didn't really mean that—you meant that The Giver should not be banned (which I agree with if we're talking about middle school and higher).

>My comment was more directed at your remark that the U.S. Constitution prevents rights from being taken away.

I never said that.

I said that to get to the point of book banning (properly understood) the First Amendment would have to be more or less done away with, which is unlikely to ever happen as long as the Constitution stands given 1) the difficulty of changing any part of the Constitution generally and 2) how closely integrated the First Amendment specifically is with American history and culture.

Take care!

There have not even been any local attempts at book-banning in the US, much less a movement at the national level. There is zero reason to believe the Supreme Court will ever condone such a thing, and no legal basis for making that argument, either, as the First Amendment is extremely clear about it's protection of free speech rights.

By "they're really good at taking away rights in general," I assume you're talking about abortion rights. Well, abortion rights were basically created by the Supreme Court based on the argument that the the constitution establishes a right to privacy (this itself is established not explicitly in the Constitution but through a fairly complex legal argument about due process that you're welcome to Google), and because people know you've had sex if you get pregnant, you have the constitutional right to abortion as a means of protecting your privacy. That is tenuous legal footing to start with, all created by the Supreme Court and never placed in the Constitution itself....and what the Supreme Court giveth, the Supreme Court can almost as easily take away by saying "yeah, we think our earlier interpretation was wrong."

Conversely, the First Amendment as it pertains to freedom of speech in the publishing world is incredibly clear. The legal argument the court would have to make to permit book bans, even if they were so inclined to do so, would have to be even more convoluted than the creation of abortion rights....and said book bans would almost certainly be so wildly unpopular that it's likely Congress would act to reinforce free speech rights.

Book banning isn't going to happen.

Hate to break it to you, but prisoners lose all sorts of rights. Whether they should have access to books like The Turner Diaries is a broader political question that has no place on this sub—not a sign that the government is about to come in and confiscate your copy of The Giver.

Me too. Bit of a non sequitur really. Doesn't change the facts that "book banning" isn't really banning and that we should be honest about why the book has been challenged.

So if The Turner Diaries (always a good litmus test) popped up on your state's middle school curriculum, you'd be cool with that then?

No no no, that's far too nuanced....burn the book-banners at the stake! Including anyone who doesn't want The Turner Diaries in school classrooms (whoops, there goes most of the sub).

Well, to get to that point the First Amendment would have to be more or less done away with, which is unlikely to ever happen as long as the Constitution stands given 1) the difficulty of changing any part of the Constitution generally and 2) how closely integrated the First Amendment specifically is with American history and culture.

Edit: lol of course this got downvoted, this sub has a hard-on for thinking American readers are the most persecuted people in the world. Love that y'all think that Ukraine-style confiscation of Russian literature is right around the corner.

Correct. And notably, a book being "banned" in the US means that in certain jurisdictions public school teachers aren't allowed to make it mandatory reading and/or it's removed from the school library. In other words, the book isn't really banned at all as anyone and everyone is free to sell, buy, own and read it....which is definitely not the case throughout history and around the world.

Yes! I use a phone stand to prop my Paperwhite up on a bath tray so I can read nearly hands-free and have a towel handy to keep my hands relatively dry for turning pages. It might be a bit overkill, but I want my Kindle to last as long as possible, and this seems like a good balance between convenience/comfort and longevity.

It was a Pulitzer finalist, I highly doubt it got a slapdash editorial treatment.

u/zingara_man, Amanda Holmes Duffy says the author omits quotation makes whenever Mabel and Jack speak with the snow child, perhaps indicating the child is a figment of their imagination but certainly indicating it is an intentional choice that is meant to convey something, even if that "something" is a specific tone or atmosphere.