Welcome to Check Your Shelf. Over the last couple months, I’ve become low-key obsessed with this 12-year-old performance of Heart covering “Stairway to Heaven” for the Kennedy Center’s tribute to Led Zeppelin. It randomly popped up on my TikTok feed one day, and I’ve been listening to it at least once a week ever since. I’m just a casual fan of Led Zeppelin (and Heart), but this performance is absolutely transcendent.
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Libraries & Librarians
News Updates
Coverage from the PLA conference.
Raymond Pun has been elected as ALA President for 2025-2026.
Bills requiring all Michigan public schools to have libraries and certified librarians just had their first hearing.
The Norman Public Library Central Branch (OK) will be closed indefinitely due to mold issues.
Kobo announces its first color eReaders.
Cool Library Updates
Taylor Swift launches a pop-up poetry library for the release of her new album, Tortured Poets Department.
Worth Reading
How to celebrate National Library Week.
Book Adaptations in the News
Jennifer Weiner has signed with Verve for film and TV representation.
Crazy Rich Asians is being adapted as a Broadway musical.
Norman Reedus’ production company has optioned Eric LaRocca’s At Dark, I Become Loathsome.
Robin Cook has a couple of new adaptation projects coming out.
Nightbitch is coming to theaters on December 6th.
Here’s the trailer for Dark Matter.
The trailer for One Hundred Years of Solitude just dropped.
Censorship News
What young people can do about book bans.
PEN America says that US public schools are seeing double the number of book bans in half the time.
Book bans are at an all-time high, and these librarians are fighting back.
Red states threaten librarians with prison as blue states work to protect them. (That being said, don’t make the mistake of thinking that book bans are only happening in red states. If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you already know that’s not the case.)
Black librarians are being threatened.
A trans author toured libraries in red states — what she found might surprise you.
How library workers are defending books, democracy, and queer lives.
James Patterson and Mychal Threets talk about librarians and book bans.
Ron DeSantis signs a bill limiting Florida school book challenges, his latest attempt to pretend like he wasn’t fueling the fires of book banning this whole time.
The Durham County Main Library (NC) was evacuated due to a bomb threat made before the beginning of an LGBTQ story hour.
It’s National Library Week, but a lot of librarians in Alabama are in a less-than-celebratory mood. Partially because Alabama legislators want to tie library funding to a library’s willingness relocate or remove books.
Related: The Alabama House passed an 18% cut to the state library operations budget.
The ACLU of Missouri argues against the Independence School District’s policy of automatically removing challenged books from the shelves.
Tennessee Democrats oppose the state’s latest proposed book banning bill.
5 publishers join PRH in its lawsuit against Iowa’s book banning bill.
“Censorship is a hammer looking for a nail”: Publishers Weekly talks to Iowa librarian Sam Helmick.
Books & Authors in the News
Sophie Kinsella, author of Confessions of a Shopaholic, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.
Lauren Groff and James McBride made Time’s list of the 100 Most Influential People of 2024.
O. J. Simpson’s book If I Did It hits multiple best-seller lists after his death. (And if you’re not familiar with the book’s controversial journey to publication, read this.)
Numbers & Trends
Taylor Swift biographies for children are (not surprisingly) doing extremely well in terms of sales.
The bestselling books of the week.
Award News
Authors are withdrawing their books from PEN America Award consideration over the organization’s response to the war in Gaza.
Could a video game developer win the Nobel Prize for Literature?
Bookish Curiosities & Miscellaneous
New York’s hottest clubs are literary events, and just as exclusive.
Missouri bookstore owner Ymani Wince launches a free book vending machine for students in St. Louis.
What phones are doing to reading.
Books are trash too: remember to throw them away during spring cleaning. Look, I’m very much pro-weeding, and I’m all for periodically culling your physical collection in whatever way makes sense for you, but…wrong tone, maybe?
On the Riot
And yeah, book clubs are having a moment.
Bookish items to help manage your TBR.
No, the boys still aren’t snuggling, but their play fighting has reached a new level! Here, you can almost hear Jonesy yelling “It’s over, Dini! I have the high ground!”
Okay, that’s it for me. Have a good weekend, everyone!
—Katie McLain Horner, @kt_librarylady on Twitter.