News of note for readers: January 2, 2025

Catch up quick with the bookish news of the past few days ... or take a deeper dive into each story. Your choice!

• The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that librarian and freedom-to-read advocate Amanda Jones can continue her defamation case against men who claimed that she was pushing pornography to children (Publishers Weekly).

• Poet Michael Palma explains why he felt the need to provide another translation of Dante's classic The Divine Comedy (NPR). 

• If your New Year's resolution is to remember that everyone has a critic, somewhere, then you may appreciate reading why Rebecca Onion isn't among the many, many people putting The Women by Kristin Hannah on their best-of-2024 lists (Slate).

• An alternate take on year-end book lists: choosing ten books that define a year, versus being the best or even being published in the year (Amazon Book Review).

• Read an excerpt from Nnedi Okorafor's Death of the Author, a metafictional science fiction novel that comes out January 14 (Reactor).

• Here are many, though of course not all, of the writers, editors, and other literary figures who died in 2024 (Literary Hub).