Nottingham Jazz Diary, March 10 to 16, with Jeanie Barton

Jazz meets visual art at a premier screening in the Council House on Friday March 10 at 12.30pm; free entry to Italian artist Roberto Alborghetti’s short film Colours of Nottingham set to my soundtrack Can I Think of Love? Later, Swing and Bass are raising money for My Sight Nottinghamshire who help support blind and partially sighted children and adults. Dress vintage and dance to the UK’s best electro swing DJs from 8pm-3am at Rough Trade.

COLUMN: Celebrating our freedom to read

Whether it is a new controversial book or a classic novel that covers topics that were not talked about in depth at the time, schools and public libraries are regularly asked to remove books and magazines from their shelves that are deemed by some to be offensive or inappropriate. Sometimes their efforts are successful, other times they’re not.

Banned NZ book scores ‘perfect 10’ in US

A raunchy novel for teenagers that was banned in New Zealand has won a rare “perfect 10” rating from an American young adult fiction website. The novel, Into the River by Aucklander Ted Dawe, has been rated 10 out of 10 in an annual list published by VOYA , which calls itself “the leading library journal dedicated to the needs of young adult librarians”.

Councillors to consider 250k cuts to Torfaen libraries

PROPOSED changes to Torfaen’s library service will be scrutinised by councillors this week as part of planned council cuts totalling A 250,000. In March 2016, Torfaen County Borough Council agreed measures to address a project shortfall of A 26 million in its budget from 2016 – 2019.