Read a Banned Book

Malaysia is forever banning books, movies, newspapers, magazines, you name it. According to the Malaysian government, Malaysians are highly sensitive people who can get easily confused and influenced by uncensored contents. When they found out that two religions shared the same name for their Gods, they banned and burned the holy books of one of them, for fear that people can't tell those two religions apart. Click here to read more.

2015: The Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy was recently banned because of explicit contents. Interestingly, the books had been selling for a long time, but nobody bothered about censorship, until the movie came. What puzzles me more is that there are thousands of other romance books in bookstores, with possibly similar or worse contents, but they don't have a problem with that. They banned some religious books because of a few wrong choices of words that may confuse or sway Muslim readers, yet books promoting atheism are still being sold openly. I don't get their logic. It seems that whatever the latest craze is, they will try to find an excuse to announce it unfit for Malaysian society. Perhaps if the books aren't popular enough, those people in the government are not even aware of their existence, because they don't seem to me like people who care much about reading.

Anyway, I managed to borrow a copy of Fifty Shades from my colleague. Romance was never my cup of tea, but I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. Personally, I hated the story, and especially the main character. I don't understand how so many women could read that and not feel enraged, or at least offended. Maybe there were more masochists among us than I was aware of.

A sneak peek, for your reading pleasure. ;-)