News of note for readers: March 30, 2026

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

• Kelly Jensen and Sarah Lamdan, executive director at the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, unpack the ways that the legal concepts known as the Miller test and as the "government speech" doctrine are being misused to promote book banning, in Jensen's weekly round up of challenge and censorship news (Book Riot).

• Author Roxane Gay has spilled a few details about the steamy romance novel that she wrote with actor Channing Tatum; the book is expected to come out next year (InStyle).

• Coleman Barks, who popularized Persian writer Rumi's poetry in the West by turning older translations into more modern free verse, died February 23 at age eighty-eight (The New York Times).

• A three-episode documentary on Henry David Thoreau, which premieres tonight, drops what's a major bombshell for many of us: that the common pronunciation of his name (with emphasis on the second syllable) is incorrect (The New York Times).