The same thing that happened to Anne Rice's works after she died. Her estate went "You're going to write us a check for how much?" and then they signed on the line.

[For people who don't know, Anne Rice was very, very controlling of her work and how it was adapted and/or used. She allowed no fandom publications, and was....difficult to work with. Which was her right, it was her work. But she also started a feud with the dude who owns/owned Popeyes Chicken because he refurbished a building in the French Quarter to be a restaurant, and the building had featured in one of her books, and she felt he ruined her book by doing it because she hated his style. Which was kind of tacky, but it was an empty Mercedes' dealership before or something like that. Lady was...unique. Then she died. And her estate has let the adaptations run wild.]

I mean, yeah. And the white kids carrying those scary skateboards. But mostly kids of color. Adults too though, for "looking" too young.

Yeah, I don't like when people get judgy about what kind of books people like. Lots of fiction is written for entertainment. I don't like Scorcese movies [they're always depressing]. It doesn't mean they're not good or that I'm dumb. People who read Tom Clancy and John Grisham books just want a fun spy thriller/government intrigue book. People who like graphic novels like the combination of art and story. People who like Colleen Hoover probably would have been the same people reading the novels that Catherine Moreland of Northanger Abbey loved so much in 1812.

I might not like everything, but what do I know, I love a good fairy tale retelling or a Sarah Dessen book as much as the next girl.

They don't arrest them, they detain you in mall jail or escort you out.

They won't. I mean, they will, for about a month or two. They'll harass teenagers who "look" suspicious. Then they'll harass the wrong kids too many times, the kind with parents who start talking about lawyers. One will get too rough with a kid who wasn't actually doing shit and it'll get filmed and end up on this same news site.

They put these policies in all the time. They never last long.

I got lucky in that respect, I think. For reasons, my grandmother paid for me to go to Catholic school. There was a nursery attached, and from 8 weeks old on, I was with the nuns from 7am to 6pm, Mon-Fri. They read to us. A lot. They also made us copy pages of the encyclopedia or the Bible anytime we misbehaved.

...I had an excellent vocabulary by the time I was seven. I had also developed a deep love of reading. Nuns are perhaps not the best judges of what children should be allowed to read. They let me go through their library and pick whatever I wanted. The school went up to eighth grade, so there I was, eight years old and trying to read The Count of Monte Cristo. [I needed Sister Barbara to explain a lot of it to me, but she was usually doing needlepoint and actually never seemed to mind.] [TBF I did not grasp the book until I was older, I just thought it was super cool that he escaped from prison and went on a Quest for Revenge]

For some reason "AR" is ringing a bell in my head, but I can't remember what it stood for. [Searches] Accelerated Reader?

Reading was the skill that came easiest to me. This unfortunately ended badly. Because in the 4th grade I was testing for a 9th grade reading level. That meant I wasn't allowed to use any books below that grade level for my assigned books. Since the elementary school was a little short on books that advanced, I got stuck with dreck like The Yearling. Do you have any idea how boring The Yearling is for a nine year old?

Oddly enough, there's so many restrictions on what kinds of books prisoners are allowed to have that the prison library might suit them to a T.

PSA Donate books from the approved list to prison libraries. A good percentage of the prison population is incarcerated for non-violent crimes, and they're bored. They actually like getting books for older kids/teens because many prisoners are starting on a lower reading level. Old textbooks too.

The Bible and its followers genuinely confuse me. I had to copy a lot of pages as a child [small Catholic school in the 90s, me with ADHD, nuns needing to punish] and had a good grasp on the material from a young age. So the first time someone told me abortion was about killing babies and against God's will my immediate response was a confused "I mean, not really? The Christian god kills a ton of children, babies, and pregnant people in the Bible." He specifically targeted them at multiple points!

But then I hear "well, when Jesus died it made a new convenant".

Okay, neat. Then why are you quoting Leviticus?

[Also the Bible was quite clearly written by multiple sources, translated and edited multiple times, and is kind of obviously drawing from shared myths and legends of the various regions that have been attributed to multiple deities] ["a great flood" oh gee, never heard that one before]

Northanger Abbey was actually one of Austen's first completed novels, and she submitted it in 1803. [By contrast, Sense & Sensibility came out in 1813] However the publisher held on to it for about a decade, until Austen's brother bought it back in about 1816. Austen then spent some time revising it. Cathy's name was originally Susan, for one. How dedicated she was to revising it isn't really known [at least not to me]. She was already ill, and she died about a year or so after her brother got it back for her. He had NA and Persuasion published posthumously as a set.

I love Northanger Abbey, but I understand what you mean. I suspect it was just the growing pains of Austen working out how she wanted her novels to be, and then she wasn't able to spend enough time revising it when she had the chance.

A CDL is a commercial drivers license. It's what qualifies a person to drive a commercial vehicle, like it says. According to the Internet it can also stand for "Call of Duty League" but most people I know with CDL decals on their cars are advertising that they're truck drivers. You might be getting it mixed up with a CCW decal. I've never seen one but apparently they exist, and it looks like they're done in the same black & white format.

Thank you for this information, it's been very difficult for me to find several obscure and/or out of print reference books as of late. I tried through my local bookstore, but it's unfortunately owned by an asshat who went "Why would you even want that?" when I put in the request.