Weekend self-care open thread: Banned books

June 16, 1904. Nora Barnacle gives James Joyce a handjob on their first date. And that launches one of the most banned books in modern history: Ulysses. Joyce chose that day as the setting for the novel, memorializing his sexual opening. And why not? All stories are about sex, money, and death. 

We are again in an age of bookbanning. From the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses—a fatwa which was almost executed a few weeks ago—to libraries being pressured to remove all LGBTQ+ books, the old enemy is back. This enemy is afraid of words and ideas. It is afraid of people having their minds opened by a book. It is afraid of a world it no longer controls. This enemy will fail, again, but will cause much damage in the interim.

For this weekend's self-care, a celebration of dangerous ideas and fraught words.

As always, dear friends, be ever kind to yourselves and those around you.