A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against key parts of the Arkansas law signed in March that would limit minors' access to books and other material deemed "obscene" and would allow criminal charges against booksellers and librarians who violate the law, which was set to take effect tomorrow, August 1. According to the AP, the judge, Timothy L. Brooks, also rejected a motion by the defendants, which include prosecuting attorneys for the state, seeking to dismiss the case.

The judge said that the law's definitions seemed intentionally vague, allowing "local governing bodies... greater flexibility to assess a given challenge however they please rather than how the Constitution dictates," as the Arkansas Advocate noted.

Nate Coulter, executive director of Central Arkansas Library System, one of the plaintiffs, told the AP that the judge's decision recognized the law as censorship, a violation of the Constitution and wrongly maligning librarians. "As folks in southwest Arkansas say, this order is stout as horseradish!" he said. "I'm relieved that for now the dark cloud that was hanging over CALS' librarians has lifted."

Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, commented: "The question we had to ask was--do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties."

In May, 17 plaintiffs, including the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, other book world organizations, local bookstores and libraries, parents, and students, sued the state over the law. Plaintiffs include two Arkansas independent bookstores: Pearl's Books, Fayetteville, and WordsWorth Books, Little Rock.

At the time of the suit, the ABA and ABFE pointed out that under the law, "Arkansas booksellers can be prosecuted for 'making available' or 'displaying' books that are 'harmful to minors.' This means booksellers have to choose to either limit all the books on their shelves to materials acceptable for the youngest readers or exclude all minors from the shop."

Thus, booksellers could be charged with a misdemeanor for the first offense or a felony on the second offense for "selling, displaying, or marketing legal materials in their own bookstores. It is impossible for a bookseller to know the contents of every book in their store and impossible to define 'harmful' for everyone."

The law also makes it easy for individuals, "especially those that belong to censorship groups, to enter a bookstore for the express purpose of finding a book that they believe is offensive simply to get a bookseller into legal trouble for selling a book that they don’t like. This could understandably force some bookstores to not display a diverse array of literary works for fear that they could run afoul of the law."

Proponents of the law have said that it is targeted at pornography, according to the Arkansas Advocate, while opponents have said it is aimed at LGBTQ+ titles.

Barnes & Noble is moving its Marina del Rey store.

Barnes & Noble is relocating its store in Marina del Rey, Calif., a short distance, to 4752 Admiralty Way in Waterside at Marina del Rey. An October 4 opening is planned. L.A. Business First reported that "in an ironic twist," the new location is in a building that formerly housed an Amazon Books store, which opened in 2018. Amazon closed all of its Amazon Books locations in 2022.

"It was not many years ago that to close a bookstore was to lose a bookstore in the community forever," said Amy Fitzgerald, v-p of stores at B&N, adding that the move is a positive sign for the bookseller and the industry. "Now we open new ones, usually in much stronger locations. Few things better demonstrate the excitement of successful bookselling these days than opening so many beautiful bookstores."

Fitzgerald added that the irony of opening inside the shell of Amazon Books, part of the corporation that stunted physical booksellers in the past two decades, was not lost on her: "To be opening in a former Amazon Books has a certain schadenfreude for our veteran booksellers. They will especially enjoy setting out to prove that recommendations from real booksellers can beat an algorithm every time."

B&N recently announced that it would be opening a new store nearby, in a former indie bookshop space on the Third Street Promenade in downtown Santa Monica. The company expects to open more than 30 new stores this year.

Fordham University in New York City has signed a five-year contract with Follett Higher Education to operate Fordham's Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campus bookstores, the Observer reported.

Previously Fordham had partnered with Barnes & Noble College; the switch officially took effect on June 15, and the Follett-run campus stores opened on June 20. Renovations, however, are still ongoing, with work expected to be completed before homecoming in the fall. Fordham students will be able to order their materials online for either in-store pickup or delivery, and the stores themselves will have an increased selection of college merch and other items.

Martin Walser

Martin Walser, considered one of the pillars of postwar German literature, along with Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, and Siegfried Lenz, died on July 28 at age 96.

German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier called Walser a "world-class" writer whose novels, short stories, plays, and essays opened the eyes of many people "most of all about the country... and the time in which they live."

The focus of his many works was in particular on West Germany in the 1950s and '60s. Walser said that he preferred to write about characters considered "losers." He once said, "I think that world literature is about losers. That's just the way it is. From Antigone to Josef K.--there are no winners, no champions. And furthermore, anyone can confirm that in their circle of acquaintances: People are always more interesting when they are losing than when they are winning."

His first novel was Ehen in Philippsburg (The Gadarene Club in English), which appeared in 1957 and is "a satirical portrait of West German postwar society at the time of so-called Economic Miracle," as Deutsche Welle put it. The book won the Hermann Hesse Prize. His bestselling book was A Runaway Horse, published in 1978, which many critics considered "Walser's most beautiful and mature book and a masterful, searing critique of society."

Walser provoked a lot of controversy over the years. When he won the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1998, in his acceptance speech during the Frankfurt Book Fair, he decried "the permanent show" of "our historical burden, the never ending shame" of the Holocaust. "Auschwitz is not suitable for becoming a routine-of-threat, an always available intimidation or a moral club or also just an obligation," he said. "What is produced by ritualisation has the quality of a lip service." Soon after, Ignatz Bubis, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, accused Walser of "intellectual arson" and said Walser was "trying to block out history or, respectively, to eliminate the remembrance." The two met and reconciled, but the speech remained controversial for many.

Then in 2002, Walser, who loathed negative criticism of his work, published Death of a Critic, a thinly disguised novel about the critic he disliked most, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who was Germany's best known literary critic for many years. The book emphasized that the critic was Jewish; many thought the portrayal antisemitic.

Reich-Ranicki later told Der Spiegel: "I don't think that [Walser] is an anti-Semite. But it is important to him to demonstrate that the critic, who allegedly tortured him most, is a Jew, too. He expects his public to follow him in this. You see, there never was an anti-Semitic line or remark from Grass, not one. And I certainly haven't written only positively about his books."

Peter Glassman with Franklin Fixtures' Lisa Uhrik

Books of Wonder, the New York City children's bookstore, is helping out Bear Pond Books, the Montpelier, Vt., store that was severely damaged in floods on July 10, by selling at a steep discount lightly used bookcases from its former Upper West Side bookstore. That Books of Wonder branch was open only two and a half years before shutting down because of Covid--and a new landlord who was going to tear down the building. "It's hard to operate a bookstore with wrecking balls on site!" owner Peter Glassman said.

An interesting Hollywood connection is that the fixtures are identical to the ones used in Meg Ryan's store in the movie You've Got Mail--director Nora Ephron and her set designer loved the fixtures at Books of Wonder so much that they commissioned identical bookcases from Franklin Fixtures for the film set of the children's bookstore in the movie.

The fixtures in place at Books of Wonder's former Upper West Side store.

Glassman noted that he still has some 20 fixtures available; about half are two-sided cases meant to sit in a center aisle, the others are one-sided and can be placed against a wall or on the end of a row of double-sided cases. "They're really in beautiful condition," Glassman said. "We would love to see them put to good use at one of our wonderful fellow independent bookstores or a school or library, so we've priced them at roughly 50% of what new fixtures would cost."

Books of Wonder is moving them all out of storage this coming Friday, August 4. Picking up the shelves then will save additional labor costs for taking them back out of storage. For more information, contact Peter Glassman via e-mail or Franklin Fixtures owner Lisa Uhrik via e-mail. Uhrik and her husband, Dave, also own Plenty, Downtown Bookshop, Cookeville, Tenn.

Whalefall, Orono Brewing Company's latest beer, is inspired by Daniel Kraus's upcoming novel, Whalefall (Simon & Schuster, August 8), and the professional relationship the brewery has built with the author. Bangor Daily News reported that after appearing on Capes and Tights, the podcast hosted by Justin Soderberg, Orono Brewing Company's creative director, the two "hatched a plan to make a beer for his newest book." The IPA will be available in cans and on tap next month at the company's Bangor and Orono, Maine locations and in local stores for a limited time. 

"Whoever heard of a literary beer? But the salty, briny nature of Whalefall made me think of a whale ale right away," Kraus said. "I wanted to work with a brewery in a state actually known for whales. Orono seemed the perfect partner."

Soderberg said Kraus "had me hooked on collaborating together from the start, but I was even more on board when the book was centered around a whale." Whalefall the beer is brewed with a blend of American and New Zealand hops and is a classic New England IPA, which Kraus said is his favorite. 

The author will appear in Bangor on August 26, signing copies of his comic books at Galactic Comics and Collectibles before doing a signing and reading of Whalefall at BOOKSpace, the events space for the Briar Patch bookstore.

Brown Sugar Baby: Christmas Joy by Kevin Lewis, illustrated by Jestenia Southerland (Cottage Door Press).

Today:
CBS Mornings: Susan Casey, author of The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean (Doubleday, $32, 9780385545570).

NPR's Here & Now: Elise Hu, author of Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital (Dutton, $29, 9780593184189).

Tamron Hall repeat: Michelle Figueroa, author of A Good Thing Happened Today (HarperCollins, $17.99, 9780063142312).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Richard Grant, author of A Pocketful of Happiness: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, $28.99, 9781668030691).

Today Show: Alison Roman, author of Sweet Enough: A Dessert Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $35, 9781984826398).

Sherri Shepherd Show: Michelle Miller, author of Belonging: A Daughter's Search for Identity Through Loss and Love (Harper, $32, 9780063220430).

Jeremy Boreing, co-CEO of the right wing media organization Daily Wire, will take a temporary leave of absence from his position to co-direct The Pendragon Cycle, based on the book series by Stephen R. Lawhead. Deadline reported that the company's streaming service DailyWire+ "is lining up a September start in Europe for what it is calling its biggest-budget production to date, a fantasy series inspired by Arthurian legend."

Boreing will co-direct with Ryan Whitaker (Surprised by Oxford). A "multinational" cast is being finalized with filming due to take place in Italy and Hungary. The TV project is inspired by the first two books of the series, Taliesin and Merlin. The Daily Wire told Deadline it will not need an interim agreement from the Screen Actors Guild, which is currently on strike. 

Sisters in Crime Australia has released a shortlist for the 23rd Davitt Awards, recognizing the best crime and mystery books by Australian women. The awards are presented in six categories: adult novel, YA novel, children's novel, nonfiction book, debut book (any category), and readers' choice (as voted by the 600-plus members of Sisters in Crime Australia). The winner will be honored September 2 in Melbourne. 

Judges' coordinator Philomena Horsley said, "The Davitt Awards are riding the crest of an enormous wave of popularity for crime writing by Australian women. Women like writing it, the publishers like printing it, and we all love reading it--and increasingly we can enjoy it being translated to the screen. That is no longer just the province of overseas authors such as Ann Cleeves and Val McDermid. 

"The writing is outstanding. And the stories explored blow our minds, opening up so many different worlds from the Vietnamese community in Cabramatta to a stack of country and coastal towns that harbor secrets, crimes, and nefarious locals. We have been particularly impressed by the quality of children’s crime novels which turn old stalwarts such as Enid Blyton on their heads."

It's been seven years since the publication of Nathan Hill's first novel, The Nix, but anyone who loved that book will be delighted he's returned with equally expansive, audacious, and bighearted style in Wellness. In a novel that's both emotionally astute and deeply attuned to the 21st-century American zeitgeist, Hill also remains true to the imperative to tell a good story.

When photographer and artist Jack Baker and Elizabeth Augustine, who's committed to "studying the whole human condition," meet as first-year college students in Chicago in 1993, their improbably romantic origin story seems to set them on course for a life of relationship bliss. But by the time they've reached the 20th anniversary of their first encounter, they've hit the bottom of the U-shaped happiness curve identified by some economists and behavioral psychologists, and the sweetness of their young love has curdled into nagging dissatisfaction. They're married, with a behaviorally challenged eight-year-old son, sparring over the details of their "forever home"--a stylish condo in a "liberal, leafy, and loaded" suburb of Chicago--and mired in a sex life so unfulfilling that they're lured into investigating polyamory.

In excavating the roots of Jack's and Elizabeth's angst, Hill displays impressive virtuosity. The novel takes its title from the euphemistically named institute where Elizabeth, a psychologist, studies the power of placebos. That's only one of the provocative subjects--among them the obsession with self-improvement, the seductive power of social media, and, above all, the unrelenting pressure of life in a world in which "[o]ur lives have never before been so free of immediate physical threats, and yet we've never felt so threatened"--that Hill explores with the benefit of extensive, and cleverly deployed, research. Navigating the pressures of careers and parenting in this highly charged environment, Jack and Elizabeth gradually lose their focus on the roots of their attraction.

Yet it soon becomes clear that Hill isn't only interested in a story that resonates with an assortment of trendy topics, but that, in the process, risks being as disposable as yesterday's headlines. He follows Jack back to a difficult upbringing as the sickly child of emotionally distant parents on a small ranch on the Kansas prairie, and a tragedy there that has haunted him for some 30 years. Elizabeth was born to a family that revels in its multigenerational wealth, but whose outsized expectations have inflicted their own form of lingering damage on her. Until both reckon with these wounds, there's no possibility their relationship can heal.

With an ample supply of dramatic plot twists and a pair of protagonists who remain, even in their worst moments, deeply sympathetic, Wellness gives the lie to its character who says, "traditional storytelling is dying." In the hands of a writer as extravagantly gifted as Nathan Hill, it's very much alive. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Blending a contemporary sensibility with traditional style, the extravagantly gifted Nathan Hill's second novel dissects the tensions of romantic relationships in midlife.

Southern fiction gives us a sense of place so vivid that the geography is always one of the main characters. When summer heat rolls around, I want my fiction to reflect it.

Pat Conroy is maybe the South's loudest and most beautiful voice. The Prince of Tides, set in the low country of South Carolina, might be his best loved or maybe his most hated book. Critics called it "seductive brilliant narrative told with bravado" and "flabby fervid melodrama." Sometimes even the same critic. Count me as a fan. Was he too wordy? I am not capable of answering that. I would read his grocery lists with rapt attention. "To describe our growing up in the low country of South Carolina, I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation, scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, 'There. That taste. That's the taste of my childhood.' "

The Prince of Tides is the long adjective-filled story of a deeply disordered family. It is also a love story. Tom Wingo unwraps the saga of his family so psychiatrist Susannah Lowenstein can treat his sister. Naturally he romances her instead. He is after all a deeply Southern man in the grand tradition. Conroy manages an unruly cast of characters and a stormy story. If he slips up once in a while with a page-long sentence, nobody minds much because there is undoubtedly the truest sentence you've ever read just ahead. Inhale... "and you would breathe and remember that smell for the rest of your life, the bold, fecund, aroma of the tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the south in heat, a smell like new milk, semen and spilled wine, all perfumed with seawater."

Baroque Southern mythology at its greatest. Once a reader meets Conroy, there is a big list of backstock. The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, or South of Broad will get you started and keep you drinking Scotch and thinking wordy beautiful thoughts for a year or two.

Tending to Virginia by Jill McCorkle is the South told through its women. Ginny Sue is eight months pregnant and struggling with a difficult pregnancy in the heat of the summer. Three generations of the women of her family are caring for her as the fourth generation gets ready to make an appearance. We get to a close-up view of family told only through this brightly colored feminine lens. The Southern tradition of secrets kept and secrets revealed creates nice gentle suspense. And what a treat to see the legacy of women and family celebrated. Every woman should give this book to a daughter, niece, or friend. Now how about we get our sons and nephews to read it, too? There are also plenty more where this came from, including Ferris Beach and Life After Life.

Do you know Travis McGee? He was the brainchild of John D. Macdonald and there are 21 of these books to make your whole livelong summer. Living in Fort Lauderdale, Travis McGee is one of those men who genuinely like women. His home is a houseboat, his drink is Plymouth gin, his pickup truck is named Agnès, and his best friend is a scholarly economist called Meyer. Travis makes his living as a self-described "salvage consultant," which in extremely loose terms means he recovers other people's property for a 50% fee. Travis is a man chock-full of good life lessons. If you want the girl, pay attention and act accordingly. Always travel with tools and gin. Help the turtle cross the road and take the woman in front of you seriously. For more tips, Nightmare in Pink and A Purple Place for Dying are good places to start. Or begin at the beginning with The Deep Blue Good-by. You will be flirting and solving problems by sunset. --Ellen Stimson