Library books from your youth expunged from the shelves

[TheGander]

Back in the 80s I was a nerdy schoolgirl who’d hoover up pretty much anything in the library. I remember some books which made an impression but have since been removed from the shelves.Anyone else with memories of books since deemed undesirable? I stress this is not to endorse some views eg essentialism, misogyny ( obviously), but more of a reflection on how some experiences/ ideas etc get discarded as societies evolve. Some on my list:
Muzungu by Dan Topolski. He describes how he trekked across Africa, sleeping with local women along the way, most of them sex workers if I remember correctly. Published before AIDS came to light. He does however pair this with vocal anti racist rhetoric, so maybe not all bad
Nuba by Leni Riefenstahl. Beautiful pictures of Nuba tribespeople in southern Sudan, most of them naked. She was Hitler’s filmmaker for the Berlin Olympic Games.
The Arab mind , by an author who described himself as an Arabophile. Apparently it was used as a guide to the local population by the US army in the 1st gulf war.
Something by a colonial type in India, describing how she killed tigers by the truckload. Her justification was the locals were grateful.
Anyone else?

Wow, great examples! I was like you as a teenager, but nothing as extreme as those springs to mind & that was in the 70s. I recognised the word Muzungu, it’s what indigenous Kenyan people call white men. I will have a think though, in case anything pops into my head.

In the 80s, I read Mein Kampf - was on the shelf in my high-school library

[ETA: I have zero sense now of what it was even about really, the only residual memory is that it was a very dull book indeed]

Mein Kampf! You’ve outdone me there.
Just remembered, as a teenager with no idea of what my style was, I borrowed lots of books on clothes. One had a chapter entitled “ Bedroom or Boardroom, you must decide”. The looks were pure Margaret Thatcher.

Same here, except that in my case, I think I had to read if for college!

And, yes: Zero sense now of what it was even about really, the only residual memory is that it was a very dull book indeed. I'm thinking I should try re-reading it, just for kicks.

There was a big effort made to 'de-colonise' the libraries a while ago. Sounded very sinister to me – almost Orwellian. I am f-ing sick of liberal-left bullies trying to control what I can read and say and think.

There are several ridiculous books in my local library, paid for by the council, that no one is interested in. They're only there because they tick a DEI box. Brand new hardbacks that must have cost £25 each. The classics shelf also looks a bit depleted. Over the past decade, I can think of several classics I wanted that were no longer available – books by Kipling, Robert Graves, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, etc. Whenever I see a classic in a charity shop, I buy it. The literary canon is coming under serious attack and I can see a time when many of the classics will either be re-written or banned outright.

Well I certainly hope not @Dappy777 . Clearly, some things which are now seen as unacceptable have been left by the roadside, I was wondering what the process was, I envisaged maybe a round table discussion with earnest librarians suggesting eg that maybe that book with the embarrassing pictures of a woman astride dozens of dead tigers had to go. But a national DEI initiative seems more plausible I guess.

A lot of books are just out of print and no longer available.
But a lot will have been purged, going back over a number of decades. It was around the early '70s that Enid Blyton began to be regarded as iniquitous and it was decided urban, working class children didn't want to read about middle class children going to boarding school and having ballet lessons and ponies and camping holidays; they wanted books that were 'relevant' to their own lives and which featured 'issues' rather than adventures. And they would have them whether they wanted them or not.

The success of Harry Potter of course demonstrated that children do want to read about children going to boarding school and having adventures.

I really want to read that. Bedroom or Boardroom, I mean. Not so much, Mein Kampf...

Ha ha - me too, in the 70s. I think I pompously felt that I should know what it was about - and I was a good way for a teenager to shock her parents 😀I have no recollection of its content.

I also devoured all the books of the Jalna chronicles by Mazo de la Roche, which I imagine most libraries have binned many years ago. Ridiculously melodramatic .

I’m now keen to know what brand new hardbacks are in your library because of DEI and which no-one is interested in?! I love a brand new hardback, how ridiculous are they?
You may be unlucky in your library re the classics, our local library - by which, to be fair I mean the county library to which I have access via Libby, visiting other libraries and requesting books I really want to read,rather than the library in our village which is pretty small - has Kipling, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, some Robert Graves though not as much.I think it’s a bit of an overreaction to think classics are going to be rewritten or banned.
( Though books do get withdrawn from libraries when they are not getting read, it’s always been like that so I guess the moral is if you want them to be available is borrow them/ request them regularly)

I think it was called Women: dress for success. As my sartorial choices were school uniform or jumble sale skirt and blouse as lovingly curated by my tight fisted mother, I devoured that book.

Also, the inter library loan system still exists, I think?

This is total bollocks imho

And if that makes me a, ‘Liberal left bully’ then so be it.

Kind of ironic too as I suspect Orwell would have been quite keen on the notion of 'decolonising' libraries, if it existed, as anyone who'd read Orwell would know. He was quite explicit in his views of colonialism in 'The Road to Wigan Pier', let alone 'Burmese Days', or any number of his essays. It's a wonder to me that this self proclaimed socialist is used to denigrate views seen as 'liberal-left'.

Numerous authors have been rewritten, many children’s books included.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/literature/authors/famous-authors-rewritten-after-publication
Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Hugh Lofting (Dr Dolittle). I suspect many more will have amendments as they go out of copyright.
current authors are also asked to work with “sensitivity readers” to amend earlier novels. I’ve seen an interview with Val McDirmid talking about her publisher asking her to work with one.

I was so shocked when I ordered Malory Towers for the school library and it had been censored. Really clumsily as well. So weird as school kids can actually cope with different ideas.
I taught history for decades and we explained public executions, the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, Cromwell in Ireland etc. And the English department did The Handmaid's Tale with year 9. And someone decided Darrell couldnt slap Gwendolen.
So strange it's really unhelpful as well as those books are historical reference points they used to show what people believed and how they acted at a time in the past. And Enid Blyton was writing for the same generation as C S Lewis. I notice no one has censored the gory parts of Narnia. Peter slaughters an evil wolf and the White Witch ritually sacrificed Aslan but schoolgirls hitting each other is worse!

And someone decided Darrell couldnt slap Gwendolen.

But Darrell's temper is a major part of her character and her struggling to control it, and sometimes failing, is part of her story over the whole series! Not fair to the character or the author to do way with these details.

I have not seen any Joseph Conrad for many a long year.
Oxfordshire no longer has a "Classics" shelf. Dickens and Trollope are in general Fiction.
Can't make my mind up if this is a good thing or not.

I've thought about that too and concluded that, on the whole, it's a good thing because who decides what a classic is? Is it any book over a certain age? if so, what age? Or do we just let Penguin or another publisher decide? Is it down to the librarian or bookshop?
I do find it interesting which writers and books come to be considered classics while others equally esteemed or popular in their time are forgotten.

I also devoured all the books of the Jalna chronicles by Mazo de la Roche, which I imagine most libraries have binned many years ago. Ridiculously melodramatic .

I re-read the entire series a couple of years ago. So intense 😆

I have just thought of the well-regarded (in his day) French author Andre Maurois who published a children's book which was translated as 'Fattypuffs and Thinifers'. I can't imagine it's on too many library shelves now. But who knows?

On a related note, my mother used to tell us that in her convent school library, the biggest excitement was reading A Town like Alice in secret - simply because it mentioned a sarong slipping down and her breasts showing. Once the nuns realised the book mentioned breasts, it swiftly vanished from the library.

Compare this to my senior school 30 years later ,when copies of Lace and Riders were routinely passed around.

But surely no library can keep all the books, all the time? Books that become less relevant or less interesting get removed in favour of new books. this isn't some big conspiracy, it's just normal. And reading books filled with racist or outdated views is, mostly, quite boring for many people.

After all, one of the thing that make many of the "classics" what they are is that the themes they explore feel as relevant today as they did when they were written.

I have been reading Jill Mansel for light romance stories for at least 25 years, probably more. I reread one of the earlier ones recently and was really surprised at how dated it was. This is normal.

Do you mean your local public library?