Timelies all!

I don't remember my parents telling me that there was anything I wasn't allowed to read. (Granted they restricted my library time during the school year at one point because they thought I'd neglect my school work.)

They were worried I'd ruin my eyes by reading in my room with only a table lamp as light. I'm the only one in my family who doesn't need glasses.

Mad Magazine and comic books were the only thing I wasn't allowed to read. The comic book prohibition confused me, but later I learned about all the anti-comic-book hysteria in the '50s that must have influenced my dad.

Heh. Valley of Horses was my Forever. I remember some of my slightly older girlfriends talking about how naughty Forever was when I was about 9. They showed it to me (I had no idea what it was) and I rolled my eyes, and hauled out Auel and started reading the naughty bits to them on the sidewalk outside out apartment.

I had MAD street sex cred.

I think Ginger is right with the library "talking to your kids" thing. I absolutely did not censor a thing (except manga) when it came to my classroom library. If a parent had a problem, I would absolutely allow them to determine what heir child could or could not read, but I would not allow my library to be censored. And I'm not sure I would act as a policing officer. It never came up, that a parent said "I don't want my child to read this and this" (remember, I taught high school.)

If it had been on my curriculum, I certainly would have honored that and created an alternate assignment, after a discussion with the parent...but it would be very hard for me to censor an adolescent's reading, especially if it were something like sexual content.

I don't know. I'm glad it never came up.

Steph, I cannot read in a car, but I discovered on my recent car trup to Minneapolis that I can watch video on my iTouch without car sickness. WIN.

My mother took me and my sister to see the infamous Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit when I was in high school (can't remember what year, but I was maximum aged 17 and Nutty max. 14). And she kept both Our Bodies Our Selves and Anais Nin openly in the bookshelves we read from.

I didn't have any reading restrictions, but my Aunt and Uncle were disturbed when they saw me with a D&D Player's Manual since that was witchcraft.

I am SO grateful for my dad's addiction to sci-fi, and my mother's addiction to romance. Censorship was never an issue.

my Aunt and Uncle were disturbed when they saw me with a D&D Player's Manual since that was witchcraft.

I'm sure my dad would have been disturbed had I brought any D&D stuff home....

I thought the witchcraft thing was pretty crazy. I mean the only spell I ever got to work was the first level Protection From Petrification spell. Though I haven't come across a basilisk or medusa to actually confirm that.

My parents never restricted my reading. But my sister freaked out when I was 12 and borrowed a horror novel of hers that featured graphic, violent sex scenes.

When I was about 13 or 14, I borrowed some books on witchcraft from the library (the one or two books that our small-town library had) and tried to do some of the stuff in them. My dad thought it was weird, but he thought a lot of stuff I did was weird, and my mom read a few chapters and said it seemed like meditation. A bunch of my friends and I went through phases of fascination with various sorts of mysticism and stuff like that, and the only time I can remember any of our parents objecting was when one mother said that her Jewish daughter could not wear an ankh because it looked too much like a cross. And then when the daughter explained that it was an Egyptian symbol, that didn't really help her argument. So, no ankhs for any of us.