Books small (or at least minor) and great

Well, this morning I thought the paperback version of Wicca in WhoVille was ready for approval and distribution. Then at the last moment I found two things that I wanted changed on the cover. Tom was very patient and made the adjustments. So I sent the new version in for one last -- please, please, please make it the last! -- review. With luck, maybe sometime tomorrow I can submit it for final approval and distribution.

While I am at it, I want to congratulate the winners and honorees of the National Book Awards. I would say I am always a groomsman, never a bridegroom in this competition, but I am, of course, never a groomsman, usher or even candle-lighter in this particular celebration.

James McBride won the award for fiction for The Good Lord Bird, about a slave who unites with John Brown in Brown's abolitionist mission. If it is any consolation to other writers, it got favorable to mixed reviews by critics.

That may sound heavy enough, but if you want something even weightier, try the nonfiction winner, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by American journalist George Packer. The book uses biographies of individual Americans as a means of discussing important forces in American history from 1978 to 2012, including the subprime mortgage crisis, the decline of American manufacturing, and the influence of money on politics. Not the happiest book in the world, I'm thinking.