book challenges

I work at a library, so of course I have to deal with the occasional book challenge. I've got a meeting about one tomorrow, in fact. I think that unlike the last one I had to do (a graphic novel which really could have gone either way, so far as what we decided to do with it), tomorrow's book challenge will be easy. Funnily enough, it's a book I tried to read a few years ago, by an author I sometimes enjoy. But this book is awful, filled with gratuituous and cliched sex. I should have re-read the whole dratted book for tomorrow's meeting, but - shush! I didn't. I can't stress enough that my decision tomorrow won't be based on how much I like the book - I'm better than that. It'll be based on the piles of objective data I (and a colleague) have piled up.
To get this challenged book out of my system, I re-read another book that features rape, Cynthia Voigt's Elske. I'll assume that I've blogged about Elske before, because I like Elske so much. I think Voigt's deliberate style can be over-the-top ("they ate and slept and washed their faces. They read and wrote and sometimes thought", from Tell Me if the Lovers are Losers), but it works well in her books about the Kingdom, especially Elske and Jackaroo.

Among the addicted

I had to read Margaret Peterson Haddix's Among the Hidden for a book club. I didn't think I'd like it much (despite having enjoyed Running out of Time), but I did. In fact, I read the next five books in the series, and am waiting for the seventh to be available from the library. I don't think Haddix has a good grip on giant organizations, or how government works on a large scale - for her fictional universe to work, the place would have to be the size of Rhode Island, roughly. Any bigger, and the whole thing falls apart. But it's fun to work out all of her mistakes, so I don't mind.
I finished The Agony and the Ecstasy this afternoon, also. It was quite good - better in the first two thirds of the book than at the end, but by that time I was engrossed enough not to mind. I'm not usually interested in art ("I don't know much about art, but I know what I like"), but I'd like to see some of Michelangelo's work in person. Apparently, there's some in the British Museum, and hopefully I'll be in London next year.
A few days ago I was so tired and dispirited about work that I took a break and re-read A Coronet for Cathie for what much be the eighth or tenth time.