Dear friends:

I’m so sorry to have missed you last week but the close of the January/February book review section, not to mention the events of the nation, kept me otherwise occupied. Is it too soon to anticipate opening my January/February Magazine editorial with Phew?

If you’re feeling at all celebratory, you can get an early start on the season’s holidays via our Holiday High Notes list of recommended new books about Hanukkah and Christmas (with one for Thanksgiving). For more immediate resonance, Kitty reviews a soundtrack, and I’m loving Kate Messner and Adam Rex’s The Next President, which bends the traditional chronological approach to the U.S. presidents to interesting, nay, optimistic ends. And I’m told a download-and-tuck-in update is in the works! (And BGHB honoree Nikki Grimes reports that her biography of Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris: Rooted in Justice, is getting an update. Yay!)

I had a books-meet-life moment last week when Joe Biden was declared the winner while I was in the shower. After seeing the news on my phone, I dressed and went downstairs to kiss my husband, who was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book. I asked why he was reading with so much going on in the world at that exact moment, and he said “I’m worried something terrible is going to happen,” and I said that yes, it could, but why not celebrate the moment? He replied, “I was talking about my book.” Reader, I married him all over again.

Love,

Roger

P.S. The book Richard was reading was The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer; having finished that, he’s impatiently waiting for me to finish The Searcher. I haven’t told him that it’s taking me so long because I’ve taken time out for Debbie Harry’s memoir, Face It. Dreaming is free!