The Curious Case of The Turner Diaries or, When Is a Book Not a Book?

Some background: For years, I’ve been tracking the books I read on LibraryThing. Recently, I have also done the same on Goodreads. After seeing a [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1azs00j/reading_controversial_books/) posted on this sub earlier today about reading controversial books, I started thinking of the notorious book The Turner Diaries, a novel filled with racism and glorifying violence against the government. The book has been known to inspire white nationalists, most notably Timothy McVeigh, the man who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. I realized that, when recently going over the lists of books I’ve read on the aforementioned sites, I hadn’t seen The Turner Diaries on either one, so I decided to correct my oversight and add the book to my lists on both sites. That’s when I ran into a problem.

On LibraryThing, I had trouble finding the book but eventually found it when I toggled from the default search from Amazon Books to Overcat, where I found the book listed. So, I was able to add the book to the list of books that I’ve read.

Then I went to Goodreads and entered the book title in the search tab, but the book could not be found. I did find a few discussions on Goodreads, such as [this one](https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/22473028-the-turner-diaries). It seems the book was once listed on the site, but its status was changed to “not a book” and is no longer searchable on the site itself. You can see the defunct page [here](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/122748746-the-turner-diaries), but the page is no longer editable and you can no longer rate the book. Most questions about why its status was changed are met with a reference to the Book Records Guidelines, specifically the part about offensive content:

>We don’t include certain records in our database for books whose content we determine contains hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.

While The Turner Diaries is an openly racist book, it’s worth noting that Adolph Hitler’s [Mein Kampf](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/17971902) is allowed. And while the book did inspire Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building, the Stephen King novel Rage (written under the pen name Richard Bachman), which revolves around a school shooting, is believed to have inspired several real-life [school shooters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(King_novel)#Connections_to_actual_school_shootings), even being found in the locker of one of them, Michael Carneal, when his locker was searched after the incident. The Carneal case inspired King himself to request that the publisher allow the book to fall out of print. Still, it has an active Goodreads [page](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/66370).

Maybe it’s just the thing in me that demands that things like my reading lists be complete, but the fact that a reading list on a site like Goodreads can never be complete because a book was deemed to not be a book is irksome.

by SuperCrappyFuntime