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My blog is apparently all about sex, sex, sex today.

The New Rochelle (NY) School District has bowdlerized Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen, which is being taught in an upper-level English class. Pages 64 through 70 were physically removed from each student's copy due to sexual content.

While Thomas Bowdler would surely approve, I do not. I hear these stories all the time but still can't quite believe they're real. I mean, the pages about contraception in our 7th grade health textbooks were glued together, but they were from the 70s. As a teacher quoted in the article says, you should "teach a book or not teach a book"! Ripping pages out is so... so... 21st century, apparently.

(Different question altogether: why, in the age of AIDS, was my 7th grade class using health textbooks from the 70s? Fortunately, they weren't our only source material. We also watched The Ryan White Story!)

Via The Miss Rumphius Effect

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the Guardian's award for bad sex scenes in fiction.

This week, Marianna at Crowe's Nest provides much-needed relief with a discussion of good sex scenes in YA novels. She's identified passages and explains why they work so well in context.

If you've ever wondered how to get steamy without getting cheesy (hey wait, am I talking about sex scenes or broccoli, here?), take a look.

The UK Guardian's Bad Sex in Fiction Award has been announced! This year's winner is a book called Shire Hell, by Rachel Johnson. John Updike was also awarded a lifetime achievement award.

You can read (and possibly cringe over) excerpts from some of the short-listed books online. I'd share some here, but, well, this is a family blog.