Oh, thrill of reading dangerous books!

What is common to 'I Broke My Butt!', 'Larry the Farting Leprechaun', 'Being Jazz: My Life As a (Transgender) Teen', 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents', and 'They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group'? All are books that found themselves, along with 12 other books, removed from Texas school libraries, and reinstated last week, for supposedly extolling 'pornographic filth'. Victorian morality is alive and well in the Lone Star State. But even as we, liberally comfortable with naughtiness and unpleasant truths, welcome the reinstatement of the books, something larger may be lurking on those quivering shelves in Texas and beyond.

Does the thrill of reading/watching/listening to content deemed contraband diminish when they are no longer deemed contraband? The Iranian or Texan or Indian surreptitiously reading Salman Rushdie's 'The Satanic Verses', Dawn McMillan's 'I Need a New Bum' or Hamish McDonald's 'The Polyester Prince' experiences a natural frisson. Make it kosher, and the forbidden fruit can suddenly become unexciting breakfast khana. True, with the 'hype' of being haraam removed, a book, film or song can be gauged for its 'true' value. But humans, especially young humans, revel - and should revel - in doing harmless dont's. For, without Victorian morality, where would teenage rebellion be?