About the publisher: I wish Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose state reportedly has the second highest number of book bans in the country, was at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend. (“Book Bans Rise in US Schools, Fueled by New Laws in Republican-Ruled States,” Apr. 22)

He would see our country in all its diversity, young and old, straight and gay, cisgender and transgender, almost every color of the rainbow, each of us created, as the Bible tells us, “in the image of God” at USC Wandering around campus.

There we met authors, heard them speak and asked them to sign our copies of their books, all in peaceful harmony.

Books that certainly contain titles that are undesirable in parts of Florida. Books whose ideas fell short of rigid far-right conspiracy standards. Some with ideas to make the world a better place, not a cesspool, a plague-like fossil hell of hatred.

Daniel Fink, Beverly Hills

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About the publisher: The movement to ban books seems limited to libraries, which have little interest in banning the sale of certain titles in bookstores.

I suspect that book bans are at least in part an attack on libraries, an attack on being able to read books for free.

Publishers don’t make much money when a school or public library orders a copy of a book. But when a book is banned, that’s free publicity and interest in reading (and buying) the book increases.

When Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was first banned by a library in 1885, he told his publisher, “It will certainly sell 25,000 copies.”

Stephen Krashen, Malibu

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About the publisher: Perhaps DeSantis can use the land around Walt Disney World in Orlando to build his theme park Wayback Machine.

There, people witnessed Jim Crow segregation, no rights for women, and the removal of history from the school curriculum.

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could visit a place where books are banned by overzealous, power-hungry politicians. Where people are told who to love. Where power-hungry judges can decide which drugs are allowed, even if they are not doctors or scientists.

I cannot imagine a world without HG Wells, Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur C. Clarke, George Orwell, Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, or all the other brilliant and resourceful writers of their ilk.

The past is really a prologue and we must preserve the fundamental freedoms we have worked so hard for. You decide that the clock is ticking.

Frances Terrell Lippman, Sherman Oaks