Why Only Children's Books?

[steepholm]

Fresh from the furore about age-banding on children's books, I want to take this opportunity to register my protest at the proposals to put Guidance Symbols on books for adults. Ostensibly this is to help those customers purchasing books as gifts – for Father’s Day, for example – who may need help in finding a suitable title. However, I can’t help feeling that, laudable as the intention is, it’s bound to backfire.

For those of you who haven’t heard about this yet, I’ve managed to obtain part of the draft press release from the Publishers Association, so you can see the kind of thing they have in mind. I’m afraid I used the bottom half as a shopping list, but this should give you the idea.

The Dripping Scimitar. Do you enjoy reading about war and violence? Mayhem is guaranteed in books with the Dripping Scimitar symbol. So go on... indulge your bloodlust! Maybe it's not PC, but it’s better than bottling it all up and then going out and doing something really terrible, isn’t it?
Present - arms! Are you a Dripping Scimitar? Then you may enjoy: Homer, Jack Higgins, Leo Tolstoy, Kate Adie.

The Teapot. This will indicate a realist novel, mostly about women and womeny things. Lots of chat, and little action. Well, maybe some slightly traumatic incident right at the beginning, but that’s your lot. The other 300 pages will be spent working out the emotional consequences.
Shall I be mother? Are you a Teapot? Then you may enjoy: Jane Austen, Joanna Trollope, Virginia Woolf, Germaine Greer.

The Blackberry. This is for people who like to read about money, politics and big business. Welcome to a world where lunch is for wimps, red braces are for snapping, bear markets are for baiting, and the devil take the hindmost!
Don’t put them on hold! Are you a Blackberry? Then you may enjoy: Jeffrey Archer, Machiavelli, David Mamet, Anthony Trollope.

The Question Mark. Books with the Question Mark symbol appeal to those of us who like a mystery. Is there something they’re not telling us? Something they’d stop at nothing to prevent us from finding out? Want to know what? For under a tenner? From a dump bin at your local Borders? You’ve come to the right place!
The truth is out there... Are you a Question Mark? Then you may enjoy: Nostrodamus, Agatha Christie, Dan Brown, Martin Handford.

Desunt Caetera

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

The authors lists made me snort my tea.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Gah. How absurd.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Sorry, intertext (and all other non-UK readers), I should have put this in irony/sarcasm font! They're not really proposing this - it's just my madcap, hare-brained, joker of the Remove attempt at a humorous comment on the current age-banding row in this country.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

On which, see this, and blogs innumerable, pro and anti. (I'm actually on the anti-side myself, but don't feel as strongly about it as many other people, for the record!)

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

It's no more ridiculous than age-banding *cough snort*

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Oh, I knew about the kerfuffle - have read about it all over the place. I guess your "irony" signals weren't brightly lit enough, though, because I thought you were responding to a genuine proposal. Could be either my feeble brain, or such deep cynicism that it actually _sounded_ like a not-improbable proposal *grin*

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's the bane of the twenty-first century ironist, I guess - trying to outrun the incoming tide of imbecility!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

It is perhaps appropriate after all that, until I logged on, LJ flagged this post with "You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors."

(Though I confess, guiltily, that I do often find myself in bookshops gazing desperately at a book and trying to work out whether it's the right sort of thing for an eleven-year-old boy I haven't seen in a while. They used to have age labels on books when I was young, and I didn't see it as a problem then; if it was a good book, I could read it any number of times in later years. Ah, those happy days when I had time to read books several times.)