Unfortunately, the current O.J. Simpson affair, re-surfacing after so many years, has dragged the National Book Awards into its sway. Media stories about National Book Awards Week have rarely included talk of Simpson-Regan, but those about Simpson have often included a mention that the book and television show announcement took place on the day of the Awards, laced with discussions of Jess Walters’s extraordinary Finalist book The Zero and the fact that he ghost-wrote Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden’s In Contempt years ago. A few have even suggested that the 2006 Simpson affair has overshadowed the National Book Awards. I don’t think so. The buzz in New York publishing circles and perhaps in LA has been loud, but across the country the stories about the Awards have been separate, focused mainly on Fiction winner Richard Powers and Nonfiction winner Timothy Egan, often noting that they are decidedly not New York or LA (think Urbana and Spokane). It’s not my place to opine on the desirability of publishing If I Did It, except, like some people, to wonder about the tense of the title’s verb and to hope it will go away quickly and people can get back to reading good stuff over the holidays, even about tragedy.

Today’s Recommendation: Libra by Don DeLillo. It’s the 43^rd anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, and a good time to revisit how a brilliant fiction author remythifies history.