Posted on February 17, 2026 at 3:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Catch up quick with the bookish news of the past few days ... or take a deeper dive into each story. Your choice!
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The only uplifting piece in this roundup is even a mixed bag — it's a book award finalist list, but the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism focuses on works that call attention and give transparency to current events and societal issues, so ... (New York Public Library).
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Katie McLain Horner's library news roundup includes news that U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace has inaccurately depicted a South Carolina library as putting "pornographic materials within reach of children" and that Georgia's lawmakers have revived a bill that would hold library workers criminally responsible if minors access certain materials (Book Riot).
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While a lawsuit has been filed against Utah's book-banning law, the state has gone ahead and banned yet another book statewide; Stephen King’s Bag of Bones has become the twenty-third book — the most in the nation — to be forbidden from all Utah schools (Book Riot).
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An Algerian woman is suing author Kamel Daoud — the husband of her psychiatrist — saying that Daoud took her life story and turned it into his Prix Goncourt-winning novel Houris (The Guardian).
Categories: Today in Books