5.  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence

via Brave New World among top 10 books Americans most want banned | Books | guardian.co.uk.

“Children’s literature of the variety produced by Crompton and others such as AA Milne, Enid Blyton, et al provided a false but satisfactory memory of assumed childhood experiences and was, for the next five decades or so of her career, a suitable fictional outlet to help entertain and distract from successively: economic depression, wartime, and post-war shortages.”

via Bart Simpson & Dennis the Menace Would Be His Buddies: Just William: Series One < PopMatters.

We are writing reviews of our graphic novels over the weekend.  They need not be longer than a page.  If you aren’t sure how to begin, check out popmatters.com for some good examples. 

Scott Tobias of The Onion AV Club reviews Harold and Maude—thirty years after it came out.  This statement caught my eye, and inspired me to share the article:

As I said, the film is the birth of modern indie quirk, full of elements and attitudes that have become cliché: Heroes who are more whimsical conceits than real-life, flesh-and-blood creations; an offbeat and slightly twee pop soundtrack (here by Cat Stevens); authority figures painted as stiff, clueless, and completely devoid of humanity; and some vague leftist political references thrown in for good measure…. For me, the litmus test for quirkfests is whether there’s some genuine insight and depth of feeling behind all that willful eccentricity.

An interesting point, which begs the question: Why quirkiness?  I love Wes Anderson’s films very much, listen to Devendra Banhart, Johanna Newsome, Vetiver, read Salinger and Chip Kidd [everything's connected], but why?  Why not jocularity?  Why not stoicism? 

What do you all think of this “quirkiness”?  Did it arise out of the post-Vietnam era only to become apropos again, thirty years later?  Is it true, as the author alludes, that we cannot find this type of sincerity anymore?

[Note the author says "twee," then three of the responders follow.  Stickiness, anyone?]