Let's Clean It Up

So, I avoid books with profanity. It would be better if authors put the extra minute into finding the right word or phrase instead of reverting to easy clichés, which is what profanity is. Kindle doesn't have a filter to clean that up. Is anyone thinking of the children? I started looking for a profanity filter after coming across a series that looked extremely interesting. I began reading the sample. At first it was little things like a d*mn or a h*ll, which in my opinion are so prevalent that they're becoming like darn and heck. By the end of Chapter 1, though, it got into offensive words. There's no ereader that I could find that filters offensive language. Long story short, if I want to read that series, I'll have to break the DRM and edit the book myself. Huh.

During my search for a filtering ereader or app, I ran across some people who were violently opposed to filtering anything. Some were calling it the author's moral right to use profanity. That makes no sense. Consider this. Imagine you're black, and the book you're reading keeps using the n word. Other than that it's a great book. I think you should be able to filter it. A lot of books are really good except for some bad language. Imagine you have children, and they want to read things that are okay except for the profanity. I think parents should be able to fix that problem. I should be able to fix this, too, especially when it's so over the top and amateur.

I ran into a discouraging video on the French front. It was teenagers. Their slang was largely incomprehensible. Other videos are like that, too. There might be one word in a sentence that changes the meaning of it. I was thinking about taking the B2 exam in the summer instead of autumn, but every time I hit something like the teenagers video, it feels like hitting a wall.

On the other hand my reading is getting better, although that YA book I mentioned the other day was a lot to chew on. I struggled with far too many words. However, it turns out it's harder to read than Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The problem was the YA translator was using his thesaurus in ways I'd not seen before along with archaic words. The publisher put a stop to that in book 2 of that series. 

A while back I was going through 20,000 Leagues, when Amazon did a software update on my Kindle. When it restarted, it had wiped out my place in the book. I searched but couldn't find it. I put it on the back burner, and every once in a while I'll read a few screens to try to find the last page I read. I did that during the hard YA book and found it so much easier. Jules Verne is pretty straightforward in comparison. I find that encouraging. It used to be harder to read. I've been reading more of it on the side. The difficulty now is all the fish and plant names he uses. I usually ignore them and keep going. Lists of out of an encyclopedia add nothing.

Have a great weekend.