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Banned Books Week

ALA highlights Banned Books Week events.

Looking at the top 10 most-challenged books of 2023, Washington Post notes that LGBTQIA+ content tops the list.

LJ reports on the growth of Books Unbanned, two-and-a-half-years after its launch.

NBC News highlights newly released reports from PEN America and ALA about the “mixed picture on U.S. book challenges.” Infodocket shares details. Publishers Weekly also reports. 

The Comics Journal explores “the state of comics and censorship during Banned Books Week.”

Reviews

USA Today reviews Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (Farrar), giving it 4 out of 4 stars: “To read a Sally Rooney novel is to grip humanity in the palm of your hand, and Intermezzo is no different.” Washington Post also reviews: “In fact, everything about this novel—its style, theme, length—shows less ruthless restraint than Rooney’s previous books. Poetry and emotion overspill their containers.” BBC rounds up additional reviews.

NYT reviews Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham (Ecco): “Elyse Graham, a historian and professor at Stony Brook University, has set out to rescue some of the worker bees of intelligence from obscurity by exploring their contribution to victory in World War II”; and The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball (Catapult): “The Repeat Room is compelling, eerie and dreamlike, even if, like a dream, the parts don’t fully cohere.”

Washington Post reviews Precipice by Robert Harris (Harper): “Precipice is both a harrowing story of the run-up to a terrible war and a fresh look at the much-maligned position of mistress to a powerful man”; and The Road Is Good: How a Mother’s Strength Became a Daughter’s Purpose by Uzo Aduba (Viking): “As a professional storyteller, Aduba successfully relays her family history to dramatic effect.”

NPR reviews Playground by Richard Powers (Norton): “There are some audible creaks in the storytelling machinery as Powers labors to bring his multiple narrative strands together. Still, he manages to pull off a sly—and disturbing—twist in the novel’s profoundly affecting climax.”

The Millions reviews American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cardenas (Dalkey Archive): “In American Abductions, Cárdenas warns that we’ve already accepted authoritarianism and AI into our lives and that their impacts will become increasingly glaring and horrific.”

Briefly Noted

LitHub highlights 27 new books for the week. 

AV Club previews 10 books for October.

NYT has an illustrated guide to new fall books. 

CrimeReads shares six horror and thriller novels set in hotels. 

BookRiot lists “9 Books that Explain the ‘90s.”

ElectricLit has “7 Boundary-Pushing Horror Novels by Latina Writers.”

People shares photos from Dustin Pittman: New York After Dark by Roger Padilha and Mauricio Padilha (Rizzoli). 

The Atlantic’s “Books Briefing” considers how to write about the Trump years. 

Time talks with stylist Law Roach about his new book, How To Build a Fashion Icon: Notes on Confidence from the World’s Only Image Architect (Abrams Image), and “his legacy as a Black leader in fashion.” Elle also has an interview with Roach about taking the time to write the book.

Canada Reads winner Catherine Leroux will publish a new novel in 2026, CBC reports. 

LA Times talks with Ashley Spencer, author of Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire (St. Martin’s). 

NYT has an interview with Robert A. Caro, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Knopf) turns 50 this year.

Shayna Maci Warner talks about their new book, The Rainbow Age of Television: An Opinionated History of Queer TV (Abrams), with Autostraddle. 

Slate interviews Elizabeth Strout about her latest novel, Tell Me Everything (Random). 

Morgan Talty, Fire Exit (Tin House), discusses “the politics of indigeneity” with ElectricLit.

The Atlantic examines Ta-Nehisi Coates’s forthcoming book, The Message (One World), due out next week.

Influential critic Fredric Jameson has died at the age of 90. NYT has an obituary and an appraisal of his work. 

Authors on Air 

Wright Thompson talks about his new book, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi (Penguin Pr.), on B&N’s Poured Over podcast.

Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert discuss stories behind their new cookbook, Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves (Celadon), with PBS Canvas.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are set to star in a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, based on the novel by Emily Brontë, Deadline reports.

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