Palak Jayswal, The Salt Lake Tribune ; We asked Stephen King about Utah banning his books. Here’s what the bestselling author said.
And while King said he doesn’t usually “respond to queries about book banning,” he believes “this case is a little different.”
In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune, King wrote:..."
, Arkansas Advocate; Federal court hears oral arguments in appeal of Arkansas’ library obscenity law
The three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis will rule on whether two sections of Act 372 of 2023 can go into effect. A district judge blocked the provisions in 2024, and the state appealed the ruling in 2025.
The two challenged sections would create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” and give city and county governing bodies the final say over library content.
The 18 plaintiffs in the case include libraries, bookstores, advocacy groups and individual library patrons. The defendants are Arkansas’ 28 prosecuting attorneys, Crawford County and its county judge, Chris Keith.
Crawford County lost another federal lawsuit in 2024 after three parents claimed the county library violated the First Amendment by moving LGBTQ+ children’s books into separate “social sections” that only adults could access."
Ruth Fremson, The New York Times; This Bookstore Gets Good Mileage
"Saint Rita’s Amazing Traveling Bookstore Textual Apothecary (its name painted on the sides and back of the van) is a vehicle for the cross-pollination of people and conversation. That’s what has evolved since Collins, now 74, began imagining her retirement dream more than a decade ago — not just selling high quality, inexpensive books, but setting her love of people, places and the wonders of a good read all in motion together."
Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter, The New York Times ; To Help SNAP Recipients, Bookstores Set Up as Food Banks
"With federal funding for food stamps threatened, employees at a bookstore in Lincoln, Neb., went to their boss with an idea: If people were going hungry, maybe they could help.
Workers at the store, Sower Books, soon set up a food collection bin near the front door. Customers and neighbors brought in bags and boxes of groceries; others came to browse for books, saw the bin and returned later with their own donations. Within a week, the storage room was stuffed with close to 2,000 pounds of food.
Nearly out of storage space, the bookstore put out a call for drivers on social media, and earlier this month, customers volunteered their cars and pickup trucks to ferry boxed and canned goods to a food pantry across town. The store’s back room has since filled up again with donations. On Monday, staff members made another run to the pantry, delivering more than 830 pounds of food — enough for roughly 1,700 meals...
Tory Hall, Sower’s owner, said the food drive felt like a natural extension of the store’s role as a community gathering place, where people drop in to do puzzles, have coffee, attend a book club and snuggle with the store’s adoptable rescue cats. Many customers seemed grateful that Sower gave them an easy way to help, Hall said.
“We’re not sitting here sad that everything is burning,” Hall said. “We’re going to find a fire extinguisher.”"
Ezra Klein, The New York Times; How Barnes & Noble Came Back From Near Dead
[Kip Currier] Bookstores and libraries have their own distinctive communities and cultures. In 2004, during my doctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh, I took a still-resonant ethnographic studies course taught by the phenomenal Dr. Maureen Porter in Pitt's School of Education. For my term-long ethnographic study that term, I sat in, observed, and became an unwitting participant in the culture and community of the cafe in a strip plaza location of the now (sadly!) defunct Borders book store chain in the South Hills of Pittsburgh. In a wistful, encomiastic New York Times OpEd this week, frequent tech culture commentator Ezra Klein opines on the sense of community and "third place" that brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries can continue to provide in the digital age...
FYI: "How Barnes & Noble Came Back From Near Dead". (1/28/23). The New York Times.
[Excerpt]
"Barnes & Noble’s resurgence is a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about its (or any bookstore’s) demise. Great bookstores and libraries still provide something the digital world cannot: a place not just to buy or borrow books, but to be among them."
