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Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Iowa Book Ban Goes Into Effect
On Friday, a three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit overturned the injunction issued by a federal judge in December, allowing a book ban in Iowa public schools to take effect. The law, Senate File 496, “bans any titles that describe sexual acts from K-12 schools, with the exception of religious texts” (emphasis mine). It also limits discussion of gender and sexual orientation in grades K-6.
In the Friday ruling, the three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit argued that the injunction had been based on a “flawed analysis of the law.” Removing books from schools does not necessarily constitute a free speech violation when the government’s purpose is to impose “viewpoint-neutral, content-based, age-appropriate restriction on the content of public school libraries,” the opinion said.
The ban impacts thousands of titles, many of which are by and about people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. And that right there is what the Eighth Circuit judges are willfully ignoring: these restrictions are not viewpoint-neutral. Indeed, they aren’t actually about the books at all. As Book Riot’s Kelly Jensen notes, “This is deliberate—removing the books is about erasing those identities, stories, voices, and experiences.”
Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Iowa are among a coalition of groups that have sued to block the law from taking effect, and they will continue to fight its implementation. May their efforts succeed.
Isn’t It Ironic?
If you asked me to name the most frequently misused literary terms, I’d give you “Orwellian,” “Kafkaesque,” and “ironic,” in no particular order. It’s been 75 years since 1984 came out, and apparently, it really drives some folks batty that we’ve allowed the meaning of “Orwellian” to become so vague that it can give rise to niche jokes on prestige television jokes. If you want to pin the definition down, you’ll probably enjoy this conversation between Vox‘s Sean Illing and historian Laura Beers about her new book on Orwell. Personally, I find rigidity about terminology when we all know what you mean anyway to be, well, a little Orwellian.
Accentuate the Positive
Audiobook narrators can make or break a reading experience, and the stakes are even higher when accent work is involved. If you’re in the mood for a virtual visit to the British Isles, The Washington Post‘s Katherine A. Powers has you covered with a look at three new novels that tackle “English” accents with variable degrees of success.
We Saw It Ends With Us So You Don’t Have To
When most of the press coverage of a shiny new movie is about the alleged drama among the cast, it’s a pretty good sign that the movie falls into “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” territory. At least as far as critics are concerned, that’s the case for the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, which currently has a 59% score on the Tomatometer (it’s rotten) but 94% audience approval. This disparity makes sense to me: if you liked the book, you’re probably going to like the movie. If you didn’t like the book or you’ve never read it, Book Riot’s managing editor Vanessa Diaz and I went to see it so you don’t have to, and we broke the whole thing down in a special episode of the Book Riot Podcast.
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