New York Library Association, October 8, 2003

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Brush Up with Mental Floss
from Fall 2003 "Pressure Point"

Check out the fun-fact-filled two-year-old magazine mental_floss! Their motto is "feel smart again" and their modus operandi are lighthearted, but well researched and written, "best of" lists and little known facts. Little Known, of course, is close cousin to Censored, and Vol. 2 No. 3, now on the newsstand, takes the connection even further with "10 Banned Books: Your Official Rogue Reading List." "It's OK," they tease in the table of contents, "you're not actually reading them, you're just reading about them. Go ahead, we dare you!"

This piece is typically revelatory of interesting things you may not have known. It neatly summarizes ten noteworthy book battles, citing relevant court decisions, delighting with quirky detail, and underscoring important facts and ongoing struggles. For example, in the entry for Heather Has Two Mommies / Daddy's Roommate, they remind us: "In 1994, U.S. Senators Robert Smith and Jesse Helms co-sponsored a measure to deny federal funds to schools that 'implement or carry out a program or activity that either has the purpose or effect of encouraging or supporting homosexuality as a positive alternative lifestyle.' The measure passed 63-36 in the Senate which means that, even today, schools that teach an acceptance of homosexuality as a way of life may be denied federal funding."

About Ulysses, they write: "For a book that's so bloody difficult to get through, it's amazing that anyone actually found the naughty bits." But in the thirties, the courts deemed that such bits must be considered as part of the whole; they required "judges and prosecutors to look at an entire book rather than isolated passages." This precedent-setting ruling was ironically apt for a book whose passages are nearly insoluble, given that whole long sections of it consist famously of a single sentence. The other eight entries (and a short history of book burning) are equally provocative, as is the rest of the magazine. This breezy yet cerebral zine does not reside online, but they do have a Website at www.mentalfloss.com.

Copyright © 2003 New York Library Association.