#rebelliouswriting ~ Part 1

Welcome back, readers! #rebelliouswriting is a movement against the low content standards of books (especially young adult books). This movement started last year with a couple of rants on Writing is Life and the beginning of the blog, Rebellious Writing. Since then, writing bloggers have included a post or two on inappropriate content in books and why we need clean reads.

First of all, I want to speak about both of the blogs I mentioned above. Gray Marie is the blogger at Writing is Life, and she does a mix of rants, book reviews, and writing encouragements. Rebellious Writing is a collaboration of many different bloggers who write young adult (which I will refer to as YA from now on) book reviews as well as more rants. Sometimes I love rants way too much. Maybe I should do some on this blog.

As a result, I am jumping on this bandwagon with two or three posts following the #rebelliousreading challenge. I anticipate that this series will end before November where I will dedicate the whole month to writing posts.

The first two challenges are: (1) Write a post listing all the good clean books you love and (2) Write a post warning people against bad books also. I am not going to list good clean books in this post because I already do many reviews of those. I don't read a lot of YA books which kind of always have the possibility of being inappropriate one way or another.

 

Books with Questionable Content

 

All of the books in the "Questionable Content" list are books that I have only heard opinions or spoiler reviews about. I read a few YA book blogs and they give the reviews that I'm getting my facts from. Don't worry; I haven't read any of them actually. I put them here to highlight things that are unbiblical and inappropriate to read.

 

- A High-End Finish by Kate Carlisle: Sexual Abuse

- Real Murders by Charlaine Harris: Condones Inappropriate Content

- All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven: Inappropriate Content

- Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver: Inappropriate Content

- Divergent Series by Veronica Roth: Inappropriate Content

- Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer: Sexual Abuse

- 13 Reason Why by Jay Asher: Sexual Abuse, Inappropriate Content, and Glorifies Suicide

- Any book written by Stephen King: Inappropriate Content

- Any book with a questionable cover: Inappropriate Content

 

These are books that Christians debate reading because of their content. Some have, but others do stay away from them.

 

- Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling: Witchcraft and Sorcery

- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Revolves around an affair (I have read this book and it is not graphic at all and also shows the consequences of sin)

- America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie: Check out my review

 

These book have major homosexual characters who are very prominent in the plot. As a Christian, I believe that homosexuality is a sin just like the Bible says. That is why I included these books in this section.

 

- Aftermath Trilogy by Chuck Wendig: The author condemned readers who said that the book was pushing a gay agenda by stating that they were totalitarians and part of the Empire.

- Asokha by E.K. Johnston

- "Of MSE-6 and Men" by Glen Weldon (From a Certain Point of View)

- Simon vs The Homo Sapiens' Agenda by Becky Albertalli

- Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli
- History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera
- Autoboyagraphy by Christina Lauren

- Renegades by Marissa Meyer: I'm not sure how prominent those characters are, but some Christian bloggers said that it disturbed their conscience when reading the book. In their defense, the book was over-hyped and the author wrote a clean series (the Lunar Chronicles) previously, so nobody anticipated having to be worried about content.

 

Most of those books had inappropriate content. Part of the Rebellious Writing is also watching out for books that contain tons upon tons of curse words for no reason at all. I have not read a book that has a very large amount of curse words that most people wouldn't ever say. They also watch out for the glorification of drug abuse. I would definitely check out the blogs above for more information on these topics.

 

The verse for this week is Philippians 4:8. "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

 

This verse reminds us to keep our minds pure and focused on God and His righteousness. Books, movies, and music that glorify things that are untrue, dishonest, unjust, and impure are probably better off in the garbage can. We shouldn't be listening to those voices that takes what God abhors as something they love. I'll write more about this next month.