Lorena's comments (member since May 02, 2008)

Lorena's comments from the Banned Books group.

During our College Preparation courses (Bachillerato) which are roughly a combination of Middle School and High School in the US, our Language Arts teacher used to give us abridge books to read during the school year to cover as many authors from different parts of the world and different period of times as possible, we then had discussions about what we read, he then would tell us to choose one book and read it in its unabridged/uncut version and present a full report on the differences when we came back from Chirstmas/Easter/Summer vacation.

I loved his system because it really exposed us to a variety of works that would have been impossible to achieve in any other way and at the same time he made us read something in its full intended version giving us the opportunity to explore the author's true point of view.

Today I will not buy an abrigded book because I just feel cheated as to what the author intended to deliver, in my experience 10 people can read the same book and take away 10 different perspectives on it, I just don't want someone else's point of view on something, I want the author's.

So, I don't have a problem with abridged books in general, but since they are not for me, I do have a problem with publishing companies that hide the fact that books are not "complete" it takes detective work sometimes to discover that simple fact, now some books don't use the word "abridged" anymore but say things like "the wonderful story told by..." in very little letters at the bottom introducing the "editor" ... just very confusing and frustrating at times.

I am from South America and we had a theology class as part of our High School Curriculum, we did study some of the books from the Bible, parts of the Torah and other Religious cornerstone books and that was so beneficial for us to understand each other and other cultures.

This is such an interesting topic for me, I wonder if we have banned books and this kind of strong censorship in south america...

I agree with Kirsty, I review the books carefuly before buying them to make sure I will get them "in their full glory". And I believe there should be a requierement for printing companies to make the fact that a book is abridged easily found in a book, sometimes it takes detective work to figure it out!