Wouldn’t this entire discussion be negated if the parents actually took an interest in raising their child and asked them about what books they are reading rather than expecting librarians to police children’s reading habits? Librarians categorise books according to genres and categories, and obviously the ‘kid’s corner’ or what the equivalent name is in the library will be the children’s section with the books aimed at children. Librarians provide the books, but they can’t be expected to know your specific child’s reading habits or whether a book is good for them or not. This really comes down to parents both being too controlling and also too uninvolved in their child’s lives. They want librarians to police their reading habits, but then also bemoan the fact they don’t know what their little Timmy will read because they can’t be bothered to ask.

Most of my knowledge comes from Ian Kershaw’s two-volume biography of Hitler. He’s one of the foremost English-language academic historians studying Nazi Germany. He gives an excellent overview of the conditions in Germany, the political machinations throughout as well as an in-depth study of Hitler both as a person and his moves as dictator. I was interested in the subject mostly because I find Hollywood and more standard school education doesn’t really go into detail as to how the Nazis ran the Axis side of the war or what life was like in Nazi Germany, and Hitler’s characterisation is mostly a “big bad villain guy” with nothing beyond that. Kershaw’s biography filled in those blanks for me.

Sort of. He had a dramatic way of speaking that drew you in. People would be enrapt in the rage and passion with which he spoke, and eventually he got enough airtime that people started to believe the crazy he was talking. The main thing with Hitler is you have to realise Germany was in turmoil for nearly a decade prior to his election. Multiple elections happened over the space of a couple years because no leader could get the country out of the economic rut it was in as a hangover from WWI and then the reparations demanded by other countries impacted by Germany in WWI. Some governments by the end were lasting maybe 6 months tops, failing at the post then being turfed out because the country was at a standstill. With the Great Depression being felt as well probably hardest in Germany, many were out on the street, unemployed, or straight up pissed at how the country was being run. And in this climate of uncertainty, crisis, and mismanagement Hitler was given the vacuum to rise off of his ‘inspiring’ political speeches that were more channeling people’s rage than anything else. He was a leader who seemed to speak for everyone’s anger. And in his speeches he gave people clear targets to direct their hatred where other political leaders were more reserved – Hitler would go “you are in this mess because The Jews took all your money” or “economically this country is in the dumpster because of the Treaty of Versailles (the reparations to countries). I will rip up that treaty first thing I do.” and a sizeable portion of the nation figured “well this guy is actually on the same page as us, pissed off with the political system, and he’s giving us the reasons where other leaders aren’t” and his normally fringe party gained prominence through the big parties failing hard.

He really was a product of a very specific portion of turmoil in Germany’s history. If the country were functioning normally at a government level, someone like Hitler would never have gotten even close to power. And then he was elected on the proviso of the conservative government in a coalition with the Nazi party, needing both to form government as the elections were a hung parliament. They figured Hitler could be the populist puppet the conservative leaders could control and use while they got things working again. Of course, that never happened and Hitler as soon as he got power started eliminating any sense of power sharing within a year or two.

Thing was Hitler didn’t even write Mein Kampf. Each chapter is comprised of rants he gave while in his prison cell to his deputy Rudolf Hess who was also incarcerated. Hess would sit with a typewriter and note down while Hitler walked around giving his usual unhinged rants. It then took around twelve drafts to be able to get the book from incomprehensible gibberish to something readable.

Here is what Nabokov had to say on his views of Finnegans Wake in comparison to Ulysses:

You have granted that Pierre Delalande influenced you, and I would readily admit that influence-mongering can be reductive and deeply offensive if it tries to deny a writer’s originality. But in the instance of yourself and Joyce, it seems to me that you’ve consciously profited from Joyce’s example without imitating him-- that you’ve realized the implications in Ulysses without having had recourse to obviously “Joycean” devices (stream-of-consciousness, the “callage” effects created out of the vast flotsam and jetsam of everyday life). Would you comment on what Joyce ! has meant to you as a writer, his importance in regard to his liberation and expansion of the novel form?

My first real contact with Ulysses, after a leering glimpse in the early twenties, was in the thirties at a time when I was definitely formed as a writer and immune to any literary influence. I studied Ulysses seriously only much later, m the fifties, when preparing my Cornell courses. That was the best part of the education I received at Cornell. Ulysses towers over the rest of Joyce’s writings, and in comparison to its noble originality and unique lucidity of thought and style the unfortunate Finnegans Wake is nothing but a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room, most aggravating to the insomniac! I am. Moreover, I always detested regional literature full of quaint old-timers and imitated pronunciation. Finnegans Wake’s facade disguises a very conventional and drab tenement house, and only the infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter insipidity. I know I am going to be excommunicated for this pronouncement.

Ulysses towers over the rest of Joyce’s writings, and in comparison to its noble originality and unique lucidity of thought and style the unfortunate Finnegans Wake is nothing but a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snore in the next room, most aggravating to the insomniac! I am. Moreover, I always detested regional literature full of quaint old-timers and imitated pronunciation. Finnegans Wake’s facade disguises a very conventional and drab tenement house, and only the infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter insipidity. I know I am going to be excommunicated for this pronouncement.

Source: http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/NABOKOW/Inter06.txt

EDIT: Garbage formatting on reddit took me an age to make it not double-spaced.