# Should books have rating certificates?



## Brian G Turner (Sep 25, 2015)

Here's a contentious thought I just had - should books have rating certificates like movies and video games?

After all, if we don't want our kids watching extreme violence and sex, then why it's it fine for them to read it instead?

Do we not have ratings simply because we're so focused on visual media? Should an exception be made for books?

Wouldn't it even be useful for readers? I don't want to read about sexual violence - would a warning beforehand help improve my book buying choices?

Couldn't it even be a useful marketing tool, to help steer readers to books they might enjoy most?

Just thinking aloud.


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## thaddeus6th (Sep 25, 2015)

I had a little ramble about this four and a half years ago (I'm aghast you forgot  ): http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/should-suetonius-be-available-to-7-year.html

My thinking is: no.

I do like the initiative I see, and RT, sometimes on Twitter about clean reads (books without serious sex, violence or excessive swearing) and think that's very useful, but it can be a categorisation (as per grimdark, mirthjape, epic fantasy etc) rather than some sort of limiting factor.


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## chrispenycate (Sep 25, 2015)

So. We need a set of international symbols to be widely available, and to be printed on book spines. The genre, obviously, one for explicit sexual content, one for personalised violence, another for institutionalised violence, one for swearing and bad language, one for adult vocabulary, possibly one for racialism and politically incorrect opinions…

Certainly some books you'd no longer be able to read the title, but anyone who's looking for that sort of literature…


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 25, 2015)

Brian Turner said:


> Here's a contentious thought I just had - should books have rating certificates like movies and video games?
> 
> After all, if we don't want our kids watching extreme violence and sex, then why it's it fine for them to read it instead?
> 
> ...



Is the genre system not more-or-less covering this? I mean look up Amazon and there is 50,000+ children's SF&F titles. Although they are all not rated* - one assumes that there is a standard of some sort operating amongst them. And if your children are looking at adult titles...well is that sorta getting into your responsibility as a parent (just thinking aloud!) 

And what about reviews? When you look for a book - if there is gratuitous sex/violence/swearing is it not generally picked up there? (I don't know, I'm not a read a review first then choose a book person, I just jump in head first, but if there is contentious issues I find they do _seem_ to be highlighted.)

There is possibly something to be said to perhaps market adult books as 'clean' (Although who knows, maybe that puts the kiss of death on sales???)

So I think I agree with @thaddeus6th on this one.

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* Depends on the culture though doesn't it - many people around the world have denounced Harry Potter as Demonic, which I see as ludicrous, but if you put a rating system in, then surely these people will be campaigning to make such books as off putting as possible and ratcheting up the ratings on them.


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## HareBrain (Sep 25, 2015)

Manga already have ratings, but I don't know if they're voluntary or who decides them.

And that's the difficulty, I think. There are few enough films released each year that you can have a single ratings organisation. But for books? You'd never get an organisation to read every book (self)-published, so they would have to be rated by their own publishers, with maybe a mechanism for people to complain to some kind of regulating authority if they felt the rating was wrong. I assume that authority would have to determine the definitions of what constituted "violence", etc. But who would fund that authority and choose its members? From a practical viewpoint, I can't see it being workable. Those who want to declare that their book is "clean" or whatever can do so on the back cover.


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## SilentRoamer (Sep 25, 2015)

One thing I would say about books compared with other mediums (music, TV, Film) is the fact that the entertainment is not passive (Audio books being an exception) so I imagine to a certain extent books will regulate themselves.

This only really works for the very young and once readers are YA they can probably read almost all adult content anyway - whether or not they should is open for debate.

Personally I was reading what would probably be censored from about 12 onwards and my mum had no real handle on what I was reading. I will be a lot more savvy with my own children (my mum never read so I was a bit of an odd duck in my house and all the books were mine.)


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## BAYLOR (Sep 25, 2015)

Why should they have ratings ?


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 25, 2015)

It's a cute idea, but in practice unworkable. DVD ratings barely work.


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## SilentRoamer (Sep 25, 2015)

I would guess Baylor that any arguments on censorship would follow in the same vein as other forms of media censorship. (Harmful to emotional development, traumatising scenes etc. - basically anything which has a negative impact on cognitive and emotional development).


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## SilentRoamer (Sep 25, 2015)

I remember when I was like 15 and me and my mum would be sat down to watch a film together. The advisory would come on: "The following contains scenes of violence and offensive language throughout" and me and my mum would rub our hands together and laugh that we were in for a treat!


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## BAYLOR (Sep 25, 2015)

SilentRoamer said:


> I would guess Baylor that any arguments on censorship would follow in the same vein as other forms of media censorship. (Harmful to emotional development, traumatising scenes etc. - basically anything which has a negative impact on cognitive and emotional development).



Have you looked at some the classics of literature? They didn't have any rating system she they were published.


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## SilentRoamer (Sep 25, 2015)

hey Baylor,

Outside of my school education my exposure to the "classics" are limited to SFF.

I am not arguing for or against ratings systems, just outlining the probably answer for enforcement a proponent may give.


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## prizzley (Sep 26, 2015)

How would anyone enforce a rating system? Personally, I owe a great deal to the librarian who pointed me towards the adult section aged 11. She didn't confiscate any of my would-be-x-rated choices. They were educational, but don't seem to have done me any lasting harm.


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## chrispenycate (Sep 26, 2015)

Enforce it? I didn't want censorship, just information to help zero in on your particular taste. If you like S&M fantasy, then fine - but labeling it means that the sort of people who will be shocked by the content  - can complain to the papers without even having to buy the book first. Oh, they don't bother to read them now? Well, at least with labels on they'll no what to complain about, rather than relying on hearsay.

And self publishers can label their own works - no need for a bored of censors - or should that be a board of censers?


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## anivid (Sep 27, 2015)

I always wondered why so much SciFi - if not all - was centered around wars, violences, and aggressions.
Cannot the authors see past what's imposed on the human race by the male hormones ??
Wars are not exactly interesting as the outcome seems sure: one of them will win, making the other party a looser !! 
Am all for a more descriptive cathegorization on books - Chrispy definitely is on to something.

A model could be seen in the so-called cosy-mysteries:
_*Cozy mysteries*, also referred to simply as "cozies", are a subgenre of __crime fiction__ in which __sex__ and __violence__ are downplayed or treated __humorously__._
Couldn't that be a sub-genre for S.F. lit too ??


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## Jo Zebedee (Sep 27, 2015)

This was asked on one of my panels yesterday (so I was glad to have formulated an answer without posting to this thread yet!) my take on it is that 

A. Kids are not stupid. They read what they enjoy and that is, by and large, what they understand. So a certain amount of book selection comes down to self-selecting by appropriateness (and, sure, if a parent thinks that self-selection is too mature they should have that conversation. I was always allowed to read anything I liked, however mature, and I do the same with my own kids - they've never yet worried me in their selection, even though one quite likes horror. Then again, I was reading King at 14 so I'm not a barometer)

B. What are we protecting them against? Bad language they hear Every Day in the playground? Violent imagery they have open access to on the Internet? Sex - ditto.... We live in a world where we cannot protect them, where parental filters only go so far. That is the world we need to equip our children for and to hide one of the few mediums that tackles these sort of things, can provoke thought and discusssion and give a safe exploration space seems crazy. Let them read and question and be able to formulate opinions on stuff they'll have to deal with much younger than we used to. 

And, also, how do we do it? We already have categories. All a parent has to do is stick to the appropriate age category, should they choose to, and publishers will have already done some of the cleaning up for them.


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## Nick B (Sep 27, 2015)

This is something I mentioned a while back too. The titles we have at the moment are _almost_ like a rating system now, but it also turns away a greater audience.
I know many people who wont read YA because they see it as aimed at young teenagers. New Adult almost sounds insulting to me.

A rating system would work, and also open up more work to more readers. IF it was done considerately. IE, not age rated.

You could use old terms such as C for childrens books, U for universal, no sex, no swearing, no gore. R (restricted )or some limited stuff, RA (restricted adult) for swearing, sex, violent stuff, and X for erotica.

It just lets people know what they are in for, not to be 'enforced'. I think it would encourage a larger audience for works that put people off by getting labelled with a target age group.


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## MWagner (Sep 28, 2015)

Jo Zebedee said:


> A. Kids are not stupid. They read what they enjoy and that is, by and large, what they understand. So a certain amount of book selection comes down to self-selecting by appropriateness (and, sure, if a parent thinks that self-selection is too mature they should have that conversation. I was always allowed to read anything I liked, however mature, and I do the same with my own kids - they've never yet worried me in their selection, even though one quite likes horror. Then again, I was reading King at 14 so I'm not a barometer)



Same here. Ever read Gary Jennings' *Aztec*? Read that one when I was 12. Stephen King is Wind in the Willows in comparison. I think I'd also got my hands on *Helter Skelter* and the *Exorcist* by about 13. Still, I'm not sure I'd want my kids reading those books at that age. 



Jo Zebedee said:


> B. What are we protecting them against? Bad language they hear Every Day in the playground? Violent imagery they have open access to on the Internet? Sex - ditto.... We live in a world where we cannot protect them, where parental filters only go so far. That is the world we need to equip our children for and to hide one of the few mediums that tackles these sort of things, can provoke thought and discusssion and give a safe exploration space seems crazy. Let them read and question and be able to formulate opinions on stuff they'll have to deal with much younger than we used to.



I guess the problem I have is that my 8 year old son has the reading level of a 13-year-old. So he can already read pretty much anything he gets his hands on. He's not at an age where he's allowed to use the internet unsupervised (and won't be for several years), so I'm not at the 'he'll see all this stuff anyway' stage yet. He also doesn't have a social filter (he has ADHD), so whatever he does come across is almost certain to be repeated enthusiastically at the school or in the playground. This has already resulted in him making a couple visits to the principal's office, with letters home to his mom and I and talks with teachers. So precocious reading ability + low emotional maturity + no filter = potential for all sorts of inappropriate and embarrassing situations. I wouldn't mind codes for explicit language and extreme violence.


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## millymollymo (Sep 28, 2015)

The advantage of sticking an age range on a spine is, I would have thought, most helpful to those buying books as a gift. It would add a greater stigma to reading for anyone not reading their "age", which in turn would empower some and endanger others. There is enough out there to stop folk from picking up a book, so while I can understand the helpful nature, I don't think its something that should be adopted.


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## Overread (Sep 28, 2015)

The thing is you have to ask yourself - would it work.

Computer games have for a long time had problems whereby because "its a game" many parents ignore the age ratings on games. Whilst it stops kids getting games themselves, parents still get them for their kids. Now there is other pressures here, there is a LOT more marketing behind most high end video games than any author can dream of to put behind their books - indeed books at large get very very little advertising barring the top names. However it still stands that it doesn't work.

For books I think it might have more effect, but more so because of presumed difficult of language than of content. You see at school that is what we have, you have "age books" designed for different ages groups (based on rough estimations of reading ability at different ages - although some are more diplomatic and use an internal level system rather than ages). So if you put age ratings on books it wouldn't reflect content so much as the difficult of language - at least for most people interpreting the age rating when seeing it. 
Indeed you'd quickly see books with a lower age rating not being picked up by those older - similarly they'd feel more pressured to try those with an age rating "closer to their own age". 


Legislation could stop book shops selling and I can say that there might be some argument that the extreme ends could do with some restriction on sale or at least universal warning signs. However in the end if computer games still struggle with this after some 20 years or more then what hope have books - which have hither too not needed any age rating for centuries.


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## Glitch (Sep 28, 2015)

Rather than an age rating system, how about a content system?

I found an example on the back of a DVD - Terminator 3.

Language : Infrequent, strong.
Sex / Nudity : Once, moderate, nudity.
Violence : Frequent, some strong, fantasy.
Other : None.


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## Overread (Sep 28, 2015)

Glitch that kind of system work work best 

However we then have to consider that a huge number of even kid friendly books have blood and violence in them. As a society we accept more in the written word than we ever would in the more visual mediums. Books have been around for longer; they've proven that violence and such in books doesn't breed legions of blood frenzied anti-social monsters; indeed the reading of many books tends to result in the polar opposite of anti-social behaviour (even if most die-hard readers might not be the most social of creatures at times). 

I think also its a difference in perception as well. A child and an adult might read the same lines; but the mental image they build is going to be different and because its almost an internal thing in theory the mental image built up shouldn't be so extreme as to be outside of that persons already experienced life. So in theory there isn't the same shock-value that a slasher film would have.


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## thaddeus6th (Sep 29, 2015)

I suspect if there were a category/content approach then age 'guidelines' or restrictions would follow almost immediately.


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## Rodders (Sep 29, 2015)

I'm dead against anything that puts a restriction on reading.


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## Nick B (Sep 29, 2015)

Rodders said:


> I'm dead against anything that puts a restriction on reading.



It isn't about restricting reading, it is about knowing what content the book has. For instance, a year or so ago I started reading what was labelled as a fantasy book, sword and sorcery type. It quickly degenerated into the authors porn fantasy. I stopped reading at that point, and if I had known ahead, I wouldnt have wasted any time starting it. I certainly wouldnt want my ten year old daughter reading it. She reads well ahead of her age and the book in question gave absolutely no clue that it was anything more than a normal fantasy story. No one would want their ten year old daughter reading fifty shades, which this book was on a par with once it got going.

I wouldnt want to stop anybody reading anything, but if there was some sort of clasification, you could see what was in store for the reader ahead of actualy reading the book.


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## Glitch (Sep 29, 2015)

If you slap a sticker on a book and say it contains certain themes, then some people/institutions will use that information to pigeonhole the book.

Using a voluntary system will also result in different interpretations of the content.

The headings I mentioned are for films. If we were to develop a system for books. What headings would you want to see?


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## thaddeus6th (Sep 29, 2015)

An issue with such categorisation is that every medium which uses that also, I believe, uses age ratings (films, videogames and DVDs/blu-rays of TV productions do).


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## steelyglint (Sep 29, 2015)

Quellist said:


> This is something I mentioned a while back too. The titles we have at the moment are _almost_ like a rating system now, but it also turns away a greater audience.
> I know many people who wont read YA because they see it as aimed at young teenagers. New Adult almost sounds insulting to me.
> 
> A rating system would work, and also open up more work to more readers. IF it was done considerately. IE, not age rated.
> ...



That 'RA (restricted adult) for swearing' might be a bit of a problem.

I'd imagine it would be based on the appearance of certain words in the text. But there are books that have, on one page or another, every single word considered '_taboo_' by the dictionary - they're called dictionaries. Restricting dictionaries to adult-only use?

Kids these days seem to care little about spelling. They have no sense of the shame they should rightly feel when they make some semi-literate and ungrammatical contribution online, oblivious to the multiple millions of net users around the planet seeing their misspelled and insanely-punctuated efforts as the product of thick, gittish and unintelligent dunderheads being produced by the obviously-failing, finance-starved and deep-in-terminal-decay education system that totally missed the point with these lard-brained, know-nothing wastes of skin who consider such blatant and self-inflicted stupidity to be the very height of cool.

"Juss keepin' it real, man."

That you are - real ignorant, cretinous, vapid, imbecilic, doltish, vacuous, moronic, inane, obtuse, asinine, dim, idiotic, risible, dull-witted, and simple-minded, you utter sh*t-for-brains. Who's going to tie your shoelaces, wipe your backside and change your nappy when you reach the age of majority and you're alone, the contents of your faecally-impacted skull facing the impossible tasks of surviving in a world full of vastly more-intelligent people than yourself, and of understanding anything at all going on around you? 

I give you no more than 90 seconds if you happen to be near a road - you don't have the intellectual capacity to grasp basic toilet training, so you aren't about to master concepts such as acceleration, velocity, impact forces, mass or pressure before a bus plasters your worthless, useless and lifeless corpse into the road surface for the local council's street-sweepers, and any passing Corvids, to tease bits of you from between the tar-embedded stone chippings of the asphalt over the ensuing few months.

Lets see your texting thumb, your godawful music, your baseless, pointless and useless moodiness and your silly hairstyle rescue you from that. Still, your contribution to humanity, and the fertilizer (your minced remains), is noted and commemorated on an inscribed ice cube stored in the main blast furnace of your local refuse incinerator. Hurry, last chance to s.....ah, well. Never mind, not that you had one anyway - mind, that is.

.


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## Nick B (Sep 30, 2015)

steelyglint said:


> That 'RA (restricted adult) for swearing' might be a bit of a problem.
> 
> I'd imagine it would be based on the appearance of certain words in the text. But there are books that have, on one page or another, every single word considered '_taboo_' by the dictionary - they're called dictionaries. Restricting dictionaries to adult-only use?
> 
> .



I did say the ratings would be to inform potential readers of the content, not to restrict who could read the book.


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## Overread (Sep 30, 2015)

Thing is take something like the tale of Hansel and Gretel - you've got almost near cannibalistic elements in that story (and the witch does end up in the oven). Something fairly "innocent" in the tale told to children and yet when boiled down into its component elements really the material of horror. 

So suddenly you'd have to have not only the content, but an interpretation of the content upon the spin. At that point of introducing interpretation you introduce a huge level of bias and of argument. You could well go in circles for years with arguments and paperwork as different groups would argue over the dividing line between enough and too much of specific content. This made harder by the huge library of material that comes before which would try to shape the new standard - books which under standard assessment could be put higher than they are "seen" in culture to be now. Much Shakespear would fast end up adult only - but is required reading for teenagers at many schools - is that an exception or do we have to try and interpret it as something less than it is. 

Likely it would only apply to "new" publications to get around that; which would kind of work as new material won't have as much connection and historical bias (barring sequels and the like). However it could still be a big nightmare. 

This is not to say that such debate does not also happen with films and computer games - it certainly does - but culturally we accept it already. Well least we partly do; games are still a grey area for many parents so I suspect books would be as well. Sure you'd stop schools and libraries and booksellers; but in the end that isn't much and most parents would probably consider it overkill. Heck I suspect most here on Chrons would argue about it a lot and would likely many disagree on some line or another. 

Publishers would also dislike it initially - consider how huge Game of Thrones is and how many teenagers are reading it. Consider that it would most certainly get into the Restricted Adults only rating within seconds. Suddenly its a scary brutal nasty thing
Such a rating could kill mature writing fast as authors and publishers would chase the more lucrative "U" rating or at least "young teen" rating for the maximum potential market impact. Mature content and themes in stories would become very hard to get published simply because you'd have less market potential and publishers would not be favouring it unless it was really good. 




In the end maybe just better reviews would cover the need. An improvement in the quality of shop staff for advice - in the descriptions on Amazon sales pages and in the number of review publications putting out quality informative and not-spoiler laden reviews.


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## Jo Zebedee (Sep 30, 2015)

Also, who's going to slap these stickers on the books? There are thousands of sp books every day. Who reads them all? Who makes the judgement? Who pays for it? This sort of thing can only work in an industry that either has the money to do it, and the will, or has a voluntary code that everyone complies with. Unless somewhere like Amazon decided to lead on it and restrict books without the guidance, it simply can't be implemented without government input and masses of public money.


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## Overread (Sep 30, 2015)

Actually its very possible. 

Pre the digital book revolution nearly all in-print books were read by editors and at least went through some form of review; adding the requirement that editors be trained in verification and thus be able to hand out certificates would be the simplest method. 
Publishing houses could actually get behind that idea very readily as it would allow them some form of control again upon the gates into being published if you HAD to have an editor read and certify your work (and we can assume that certification would come with cost and thus might be hard to get outside of publishing houses). Such a system would really curtail the independent market for a few years till it all caught up. 

It could be done; but certainly like you say it would be a huge logistical nightmare to catch-up. And that is without considering the international market!


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## AnyaKimlin (Sep 30, 2015)

I don't see the point - I'd read Clockwork Orange and discovered my first bodice ripper by the time I was ten.  But then I got into trouble at my daughter's nursery because I'd taught her her the three little pigs complete with bacon sandwiches, ham and pineapple pizza and wolf soup (it also included bone crunching, butchery and slurping)  -- she went and told it to the other children. 

My daughter has read a variety of stories in the past month (she's 12); Hunger Games, Young Bond, Fault in Our Stars, something called Sisters and Red Shift.


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## WaylanderToo (Oct 1, 2015)

Overread said:


> Thing is take something like the tale of Hansel and Gretel - you've got almost near cannibalistic elements in that story (and the witch does end up in the oven). Something fairly "innocent" in the tale told to children and yet when boiled down into its component elements really the material of horror.




IIRC the original Grimm's fairy tales were _VERY _grim - we've just got a hugely sanitised version of them.


Anywho - back on topic. In the 80's there was the 'moral majority' movement lead IIRC by Tipper Gore who managed to get 'parental advisory' stickers placed on all music deemed to be unsuitable (who actually defines unsuitable - but that's a who other topic) - the effect was that these stickers actually became a marketing tool rather than detrimental to sales. Thinking about it in another way if a book is marked as 'salacious' for one or 2 scenes talking "...'bout a man and a woman making love..." I really don't want to be viewed as reading porn when it is far from that. Over-all I also like Glitch's idea


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## Danny McG (Feb 19, 2017)

Reading through some of the points made by various members in this thread. IMO deffo no 'advisory labels' or warning stickers. You wouldn't be allowed near a Bible until 18 in such an instance. Mega violence, rape, incest, torture, human sacrifice, brutal slavery etc etc  - and that's just in the first three books!


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## althea (Mar 5, 2017)

I would never have read The Hunger Games trilogy,if I had known it was for YA.
My mother allowed us to read whatever we wanted to read.Of course we read "unsuitable" for children books,like Dickens,at an early age.
At first ,when I was reading through this thread,I thought rating books would be a good idea.Now, after a bit of thought,I'm against it.


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## BAYLOR (Mar 5, 2017)

Ratings are for movies, not books.


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## Parson (Mar 6, 2017)

althea said:


> I would never have read The Hunger Games trilogy,if I had known it was for YA.


 Which really shows us that any kind of system for describing books falls afoul of the outlier. I'd like to say something like "good books always find an audience." But then I remember 50 Shades of Gray.  BARF!


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## Teresa Edgerton (Mar 6, 2017)

When it comes to books, I think the cover copy (or for ebooks the online product pages) do a pretty good job of warning readers what kind of content to expect.  If the book is full of steamy sex or graphic brutal action you can usually depend on that fact to be mentioned somewhere in the description and/or the admiring blurbs from other authors—not as a warning, but as a selling point.  These are not things that publishers try to conceal from the public.  Quite the reverse.  A rating system would merely be superfluous.


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## thaddeus6th (Mar 6, 2017)

On YA: I don't read it. In the same way I don't read children's books (except when I order them by accident and then get strangely annoyed when I force myself to read it and end up quite liking it). 

I don't need lots of violence or swearing etc in what I read, but YA just sounds a bit too soft. No problem with that or the clean-reads (indeed, I think it's useful for people who don't like foul language and bloodshed to have a category for things lacking gore and swearing) but it doesn't feel like my cup of tea.

It would be interesting to consider how many people the YA tag entices, and how many it puts off. I do wonder to what extent, more broadly, book descriptions are lighthouses rather than siren calls.


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## AStormCloud'sSong (Mar 6, 2017)

I don't think so. It'd be too hard to enforce. 

I think there should still be ways of protecting more emotionally fragile or squeamish people, whether they are children or adults. Prereading by a third party works just fine (parents, friends etc.). And if they still manage to read it, reading about sensitive topics such as extreme violence, domestic abuse, or sexual violence is usually less traumatising than watching them in a movie. Hence why ratings work for movies rather than books.


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## Parson (Mar 7, 2017)

thaddeus6th said:


> but YA just sounds a bit too soft. No problem with that or the clean-reads (indeed, I think it's useful for people who don't like foul language and bloodshed to have a category for things lacking gore and swearing) but it doesn't feel like my cup of tea.



*Hunger Games* was a YA. That book was plenty enough adult for everyone. I believe that usually YA means that the intended audience is Young Adults and says not very much about the content. For content you need to read the cover copy as our *Goblin Princess* points out.


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## RX-79G (Mar 7, 2017)

I don't know if fiction words on a page actually have the sort of effect as more visceral forms of media. The idea of protecting someone from such an intellectual process as reading seems kinda bizarre.


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## Parson (Mar 7, 2017)

I'm not in favor of giving books ratings. But I can testify to the visceral effect of books. I was reading _Treasure Island _as a 10-12 year old and I read the line "the decks were stained with blood." and I literally could not read any more. I had read my share of shoot em up Westerns, but something about that mental image just grabbed me. I have never been able to finish the book.


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## RX-79G (Mar 7, 2017)

Parson said:


> I'm not in favor of giving books ratings. But I can testify to the visceral effect of books. I was reading _Treasure Island _as a 10-12 year old and I read the line "the decks were stained with blood." and I literally could not read any more. I had read my share of shoot em up Westerns, but something about that mental image just grabbed me. I have never been able to finish the book.


Then maybe my use of "visceral" missed the mark. My point was that you didn't observe a blood stained deck or hear the screaming of people being murdered. Instead, your brain turned a sentence composed of six completely unemotional words and manufactured a horror that made you stop reading. And I'm saying that is an intellectual process to go from those six simple words to horror. It requires an active process to take an emotional and immediate feeling from static words on a page, and that process is unpredictable from person to person.

It would be frightening to try and apply experiences like yours to the prediction of what is or is not "age appropriate". When I was four the Spider-Man segment on the young childen's public education show "The Electric Company" scared me silly, despite it being intended to be a funny segment encouraging reading in kids my age. Trying to account for how people process subtle messages, especially in print, is not a simple task or idea.


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