Poll: Should books be rated?

[nativebelle]

Uh of course they SHOULD be rated. Yes, it would be a pain to rate them all, but it would also help. My school ended up having to ban about half the books in the library because "Fat kid takes over the world" or something had the F word in it. Then the school was forced to allow the parents to decide what books were ok for students because "Obviously the school is unable to do so."Newspapers being rated wouldn't be bad either, the news shows are rated also.
For people saying you can tell automatically then why do we have movies rated? Couldn't you just read the summery and look at the front to know? And yes, sure you have to imagine everything compared to actually seeing it in movies and games, but do you really want kids being curious what it looks like for someone to be decapitated, raped, beat up, etc?

That's a school library though, you'd think they'd be able to choose kids books and if they couldn't then that was their fault. I mean childrens books are fairly easy to distinguish.

I read Lolita when I was really young, as well as countless murder mystery books. I mightn't have understood them properly, I was definitely exposed to stuff that kids aren't usually, but I don't regret it, it hasn't messed me up. It just seems a lot more ridiculous to rate books than games or movies, though I think ratings for these things are sometimes stupid. It would be harder for a kid to understand whats happening in a book than slasher gore movie anyway.

 

[Kiefer13]

No.

Absolutely not.
I don't even think games should be rated - marked, maybe, for certain content, but not given a "you can't buy this until you're [x]" rating.

You do have a habit of getting to threads before me and saying exactly what I was going to say. In other words: This.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

It might be a good idea, but it would generate a lot of problems beyond the practical side of things. Children you might be able to handle older ideas wouldn't be able to read/purchase books. People who read something significantly younger than their age would be ridiculed, which raises interesting question about whether 'suitable for children' (containing ideas children have the maturity to deal with) equates to 'childish' (aimed at children)

A good case in point would be the animation age ghetto, and also movie ratings in general. Animation can be for adults, but the nature of western cartoons is such that western people equate cartoons with childishness, regardless of rating. They went through the whole rigmarole of making 'adult' covers for Harry Potter, now imagine if it had a massive 11+ sticker on it. (The inverse applies, since people would also be put off from older books, assuming they must contain graphic sex and or violence)

As for the general problems of ratings, it creates a false image of the book. As mentioned above, higher ratings are given to movies for sexcual or violent content, not for the maturity of the content they contain. A holocaust movie could easily be rated 12+, but contain ideas not suited for a 12 year old, because they just don't happen to have sex and violence in. The ratings system would need to differentiate between contet not suitable for minors because of graphic description, or because of imagery and connotation. It would become too convulted, and become a crude sweeping tool.

But for the reverse, it might be necessary to have some restriction, at least to know not to let a child read something they would understand just enough to misinterpret.

 

[Susano]

NO NO NO.
Having limits on who can read books is limiting the amount of knowledge a person has access to.
First you start off with ratings, but what if you then start censoring them? Of course at first it would for for stuff like "Sexual Content" or "Extreme Violence" but what if it were to turn into then censoring things "Likely to inspire violence against authority figures" (á la what the Aussies did with the Riot Cop infected in L4D2)? From there it would be easy to censor political opinions under the façade of "Inspiring Dissent".

Long story short, I think censorship is a bad thing.

Also you would probably end up taking my precious Necronomicon/V for Vendetta/Possibly Watchmen away from me. D;
And that Stephen King novel It would probably be banned 'cause of what the children end up doing after seriously injuring IT in the tunnels.

 

[Romblen]

Nah, books for adults are generally too hard for kids to read, so it works itself out.

Not really. The average adult book is written at a 5th grade level.

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

No.
The separation between kid's, teenager's and adult's books are classification enough. If someone cann't work out that there might be violence in a thriller or sexual stuff in a romance ain't smart enough to be reading anything that would require and age rating if such things were in place.
In my experience (as a keen reader and as a library worker), if someone isn't old/mature/wise enough for something in a book, they will normally won't understand it anyway and ignor it. The image isn't forced upon them like it would be in a film or game, so there isn't the same risk of someone being affected as there is from a film.

As with anything where someone tries to blame a media for their own missdeeds, I say balme the idiot, not the book/film/game etc.

 

[Summerstorm]

partly... Most books are ok for all ages (or all kids who can understand what they are reading). But some books should be kept away from children and only be available to adults. (Not really graphic violence and such but books which could be "planting REALLY weird ideas and present wrong worldviews as fact with a high level of cunning and are meant to prey on mallable young minds in nefarious manner")

 

[Liberaliterr]

No. Never. Ever. The day that happens is the day I truely give up on the world.

 

[noobface]

Wait. We supposedly have a problem with kids not reading enough and they want to rate BOOKS?

Genius. Seriously. We all know that when kids see something that has a rating higher than their age, they want to watch/play it, right. Surely rating books is the best way to get kids to read more adult books! By banning them, they make sure that everyone will want to read them!

 

[Jonny49]

I don't think so. You can tell the difference between kid and adult books by simply glancing at the cover.
Not to mention a book is a totally different medium to film and games. With them it's all visual, you see the sex and violence. With a book it depends entirely on your ability to mentally visualise.

 

[senorcromas]

No! 'course not! Think about all the classic books that would be restricted! Alice in Wonderland, (blood and gore, drug references) Moby Dick, (violence, blood and gore, strong language), hell, even Don Quijote (violence, suggestive themes)! What kind of world would do something like that??!

Rabid book fanboyism aside, wouldn't something like a rating affect the writer's creativity? I mean, if a book were to get a rating that would bar its core demographic, wouldn't the writer, instead of trying to make the most interesting book they could, try to tone done key parts of the story? It'd interrupt their flow, their rhythm, a very important part to writing anything. Also, doesn't writing pride itself in being one of the only mediums almost entirely free of censorship?

 

[Brnin8]

I think that if one form of media has to have a rating than all forms of media should have rating so that it is fair.
Twilight would be rated R for retarded IMO

 

[soladrin]

no, and ratings on anything shoul just be changed to 12+ they will be seeing it anyway from that point onwards. Good thing i live in Holland where shops dont give a shit about them anyway (and that im 20 by now anyway XD )

 

[Klepa]

Possibly. Not a very strong, nor educated opinion though. I voted for the second option. I think the ratings should be a lot milder though. Saying Jack shoots Alice in the face with an automatic shotgun, would make a book slightly dark in atmosphere, but instantly make a movie unsuitable for youngsters.

My grammar's all over the place again.

 

[Aesir23]

No, or we'll get idiots like Atkinson again, only for books. As it is, one group tried to ban a number of books in Boston a long time ago for inappropriate content like sex, drug use, blasphemy, etc. I can see why you'd want to keep that sort of thing out of the hands of children. But they banned it for EVERYONE in Boston.

 

[King of the N00bs]

maybe that would be ok

 

[high_castle]

You start rating books and middle school English will disappear completely. Want to teach Romeo and Juliette to your students? Too bad. Sex and violence with depictions of suicide will no doubt land it the equivalent of an R or M rating. Same with Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises, and countless other staples of lit class.

Although, maybe if we brand some of these classics as M, we can get more people to read them, similar to how making a game M means somehow it's edgier. We could inspire a whole generation to read by telling them they shouldn't...

 

[dududf]

Nah, books for adults are generally too hard for kids to read, so it works itself out.

I disagree... and that's kinda a wrong way to look at "kids"

When I was 9 I was reading more then my Parents. A book a week, and ACTUAL books, like Harry Turtledoves "Blood and Iron" =[

______________________________________________

Yes and no, Yes there should be a "Reccomendation age" for books, but it should not be enforcable, so if a 6 year old wants "JOHNYS SEX RUSH 9001!" and is just words, he can knock himself out. All in all, it's doing more good then harm.

 

[Clyde]

I might have been a better person had I not read Cult Rapture.
But, who can say?

 

[DuplicateValue]

Nah, books for adults are generally too hard for kids to read, so it works itself out.

I disagree... and that's kinda a wrong way to look at "kids"

When I was 9 I was reading more then my Parents. A book a week, and ACTUAL books, like Harry Turtledoves "Blood and Iron" =[

Of course I know that some kids can read at a very advanced age (I read His Dark Materials in 2nd Class, though I can't remember if that's much of an achievement).

But I would say that any child that can read at the same level as an adult is mature enough to understand the adult content, and should be allowed to do so.