You Can't Read This: Forbidden Books, Lost Writing, Mistranslations, and Codes

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University. She is the author of several books, including The
Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret
Laurence: The Long Journey Home.

With its challenging title and many black-and-white illustrations, You
Can’t Read This provides an intriguing introduction to much of the
material described in its subtitle. The front-cover flap promises tales
of censors, vandals, and spies—in short, stories of characters who
devote themselves to secret writings and who are determined, like the
author, to unearth their secrets.

The chosen field is vast, ranging from the decoding of ancient
languages to modern American literature. It includes secret writers as
well as those devoted to exposing them. In 140 pages, readers range
across the world and over thousands of years in time. The intriguing
illustrations are accompanied by short, pithy commentaries. In a chapter
titled “Books Not to Be Read,” Ross tells of three boys—Big
Magnus, Little Bogi, and their friend Eirikur, reputedly the bravest boy
in Iceland—who go in search of a legendary book of sorcery. Iceland
became Christian in AD 1030, but belief in powerful Norse gods persisted
for centuries. In another chapter, Ross compares the legends of old
Norse gods with J.K. Rowling’s story of a student wizard in Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Ross concludes that books contain
forces we may not fully appreciate, and that each reader, like young
Eirikur, “has a responsibility to know when to shut the cover.”

You Can’t Read This is both thoughtful and imaginative. Ross is an
inspired writer with the ability to appeal to a wide variety of readers,
both young and old. Highly recommended.