So I've been struggling to keep up with my teen girls' reading habits. They can "consume" in a day a book that takes me weeks to read. Even though the oldest is now sixteen, I still like to "screen" what they read, and have been hunting for good books for these girls.
In the process of this hunt, I have discovered "Christian" romance novels. I keep reading reviews of books by authors such as Melanie Dickerson, Lynn Austin, Valerie Comer and others which assure me that their books are "clean" and "pure" with "nothing inappropriate". I'm just glad I didn't take these reviews on face value and read some of these books before handing them over to my daughters!
Sure there aren't explicit references to genitals, nor is there crude language, but there is an awful lot of implied physical desire that I consider inappropriate even for me as an adult, let alone my vulnerable teen girls. It seems I am almost entirely alone in this, but I really do believe that the books that I'm finding in the Christian romance genre are liable to light a dangerous fire of desire in young women.
And so, I keep going back to the drawing board trying to find good books for my girls to read. Many that I enjoyed in my youth are unfortunately out of print. Gutenberg project has been a great source of books online (although just because a book was written 100 or more years ago doesn't guarantee respectability, so I skim them first), but we do like a "real" book to hold in our hands. Our local libraries, it seem, specialise in all things zombie, vampire or otherwise completely inappropriate (apart from the few classics that we've already read) for teens, and I find it insanely difficult to find adult fiction that I'm OK with even reading myself.
Thankfully, life is about a lot more than reading! I think the lesson in all this for me is that our family need to engage hobbies other than reading :)
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