Does Anybody Else Have A Bad Taste In Their Mouths, Over Objections To Sexually Explicit Books ???

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

86. The same way we do with lots of other things?

Probably 2/3 of the things you know about in life you never read in the original. You read reviews, secondhand accounts, other people talking about them. And you judge what you've heard based upon the trustworthiness of of those sources, as well as any further experiences you have on your own. Any 'systematic review' in a peer reviewed journal, for instance, is a secondhand version and summation of results from dozens or hundreds of other articles, so that you don't personally have to read all of the original articles to know what they're talking about, or how well they were written. Ditto the vast majority of textbooks. You almost never read the original sources unless you've got journal subscriptions so you can keep up with a specific field, you're doing your own research, or are simply paranoid about the agendas of textbook writers.

I read a really good, in-depth review of Shades when the book first came out. It didn't just talk about the psychology of the characters or the writing, but even delved into the political and economic aspects in a way that let me know reading the book firsthand would simply be a waste of my time.

That's quite a bit different than RW 'fundies' who start screaming about a book being evil because Rush Limbaugh gave them 4 or 5 talking points to parrot.