Ruth Bass - Talks

Selected Works

P.S. June 1, 2024: I've read 10 of the books in the puzzle since January 1 and 7 prior to that. "The Hug U Give" may be my favorite. Everyone should read it.

January 2, 2024

Puzzling over banned books on the dining room table

RICHMOND

Making New Year's resolutions is not for me. In the past, I've been obnoxious enough to offer other people ideas on what they might resolve to do. But me? I gave up smoking for the last time in the middle of whatever year that was, I stopped biting my nails at some meaningless date, and, as a six-year-old, I quit sucking my thumb one summer because my grandmother asked me to.

But this year is different. I am, faced with Moms for Liberty and some unidentified photographer in Great Barrington, resolving to read banned books. The clincher on this resolve was Santa Claus. He left me a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle depicting 66 well-known banned books, the pieces ensconced in a book-shaped box. Irresistible. We did it Christmas Day.

It was alarming to discover that I had read only seven of these books that have been banned somewhere, sometime. Who knew, decades ago, that I would be harmed by loving "Huckleberry Finn" and "Grapes of Wrath?" And while "The Kite Runner" disturbed me, I doubt it damaged my brain in any permanent way, although it should have given me nightmares.

The prize among the 66 on creator Jane Mount's puzzle is "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, a book to relish and learn from. And then embrace as a movie when Gregory Peck brought Atticus Finch to life with few people saying, "They ruined the book." (Memorably, when author James M. Cain was asked how he felt about what Hollywood "did" to one of his books, he said, "People tell me, don't you care what they've done to your book? I tell them, they haven't done anything to my book. It's right there on the shelf. They paid me and that's the end of it.")

It was enlightening and reassuring to find that my 16-year-old granddaughter had already read more of the books stacked in the puzzle than I had. She was also very clever at putting together the all-white border, which her mother and I gratefully eschewed. Then she went back to reading Jane Austen, which so far the self-appointed book critics haven't attacked.

In addition to reading banned books – I've already started Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" – I'm going to buy a few simply because, much as I love libraries, authors need financial support, and libraries ordinarily buy one and done. I picked Bradbury instead of Huxley or Maya Angelou (!) because we learned in Russia, when it was still the Soviet Union, that he was the favorite American writer of a teen-age literary club we visited. We had no idea how they laid hands on his books because nearly everything American seemed to be banned in the U.S.S.R., but our guide enlightened us. It seems traveling Americans finish books and leave them in their hotel room, and they were read and passed on until they fell apart. We left our paperbacks there.

Banning books is dangerous, more hazardous than putting lighted candles on your Christmas tree. With the candles, you risk burning down the house. With book bans, you destroy thought around the world. (And the act isn't covered by insurance.) Historically, some bad people have prohibited or burned books, the Nazis, for instance; and way back in 213 B.C., the first emperor of China burned books and executed scholars in his effort to control thought and gain greater power.

It's interesting that some of the would-be book-banners have openly admitted they didn't bother to read the book under assault. At least the Great Barrington complainant had opened the book and taken a picture of something he/she objected to. It is ludicrous and unfair for anyone to challenge an author's work when the person has not read it, or at least a few chapters until he or she is so overwhelmed by perceived evil that they are unable continue.

Books inspire thought, their authors are inspired by what's around them. Writers reflect the time they're in. Except for sci-fi, fiction is rarely fantastical – and much of the old sci-fi has turned out to be more than fiction, as astronauts land on the moon and Rovers prowl on Mars. Banning books knocks out freedom to read, freedom to think, freedom to write. Ironically, the book banners help sales by providing free advertising and piquing human interest

I'm piqued. The jigsaw pieces will be back in their box but the list is on the refrigerator, and the puzzle of "why that one?" will go on.

Ruth Bass is an award-winning journalist. Her website is www.ruthbass.com.

Column of March 2, 2015

Fiction

Sarah Meets Silas, a prequel

"Rose"

A sequel to "Sarah's Daughter," published by Gadd Books in 2010.

"Sarah’s Daughter"

A 19th century teen deals with family sorrow, joy, friendship, bereavement.

Opinion

Weekly column, Berkshire Eagle

Weekly column that has appeared on the front of local news section of daily newspaper for 26 years, 52 weeks of the year, briefly moved inside in 2010 and is now back on the front.

Cookbooks

A series of cookbooks

A series of small books focusing on the use of fresh herbs in various milieu.

Photography

Free-lance photos -- scenic and historic -- have appeared in The (New London, CT) Day, Forbes magazine, Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Berkshire Eagle, The Boston Globe, Yankee Magazine and Yankee Travel Guide.

Opinion excerpts

Excerpts from Ruth Bass columns

Taken from past columns in The Berkshire Eagle

Quick Links

Essays about women's issues

Includes Amy Hill Hearth's interview of Ruth Bass, April 2012

Ruth Bass interviewed by Hannah Storm on The Early Show, CBS, May 2007

Contact the author

Authors Guild

Talks

Talk on the cult of domesticity, Ventfort Hall's Victorian tea, Lenox, Massachusetts

Talk on writing an historical novel and writing a family history at Greenfield Historical Society, Greenfield, Massachusetts

Talk on gardening at Springside House gardeners' group, Springside Park, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Reading from "Sarah's Daughter" and talk at Worcester Women's History Project, Worcester, Massachusetts

Talk on writing family history at Berkshire Family History Association, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Talk on language of an historical novel and book signing at Sheffield Historical Society, Sheffield, Massachusetts

Talk and reading from "Sarah's Daughter," Mason Library, Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Talk and reading from "Sarah's Daughter," Richmond Free Public Library, Richmond, Massachusetts

Book club chats in Belmont, Pittsfield, Lenox, Alford, Williamstown, Lee, all in Massachusetts

Book signings for "Sarah's Daughter" in Pittsfield and Lenox, Massachusetts and Kinderhook, New York.