From Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong, a new book of essays by Paul Chaat Smith. Regarding eclipses, nuclear weapons, and human unluckiness as evidence for—well, if not a fair and just God, at least a God with a sense of humor:

There's the Great Barrier Reef, paintings by Vermeer, The Simpsons during the mid-1990s—miracles for sure but not necessarily proof of divine existence.

A solar eclipse, on the other hand, isn’t simply fabulous. It is a precisely engineered—okay, everyone knows what it is: the moon slides in front of the sun, and if it’s a total eclipse then day becomes night. Maybe it’s just me, I don’t know, but only in the past few years have I finally appreciated how the entire trick depends on the most unlikely of coincidences. Here it is: if you live on earth, the sun, which is a star ninety million miles away, appears to be exactly the same size as the moon. Which is 250,000 miles away. The sun is a fairly unremarkable star, but it is still gigantic, vastly larger than earth, and the moon is basically a rock out there, a piece of dust compared with the sun. What are the odds that these two utterly dissimilar bodies would end up in a perfect rendezvous, the grey rock exactly blocking out the distant star, with the over-the-top demonstration (showing off, really) of the corona, the thin, blazing edge of light that surrounds the moon?

Everyone talks about the darkness at noon aspect, which is certainly impressive, but it would happen just the same if the moon appeared to be, say, 30 percent larger than the sun. It would be interesting if the moon appeared to be only half as large, a big dot in the middle of the sun. Or maybe their orbits never intersected, or hardly ever intersected. Instead, we get a stunning, perfect alignment, and for a few minutes the moon and the sun are proved to be the same size. You know, that’s how people figured out there were mountains on the moon, seeing their ridges and peaks in the solar backlight.

Exactly the same size.

I happen to believe this is convincing, compelling evidence of a supreme deity, of a creator, but whether or not you buy that I don’t see how anyone could dispute that solar eclipses prove schoolteachers and reporters are simply brilliant at missing the point.

You know, I bring books to every Slog Happy. And it seems like every time, I bring the books that people request from the time before. Last time, people requested young adult books. This time, people did not seem to like like the young adult books. I will try harder next time. And here, free of charge, is a Slog Happy tip: The really awesome books disappear within two minutes of my putting them on the table, so you should show up early.

There are two books that none of you wanted. One does not surprise me, and one does. Come Sunday, by Isla Morley, is the one that doesn't surprise me. Here is what MacMillan says about the book:

A wonderful new storyteller unleashes a soaring debut that sweeps from the hills of Hawaii to the veldt of South Africa.

Come Sunday is that joyous, special thing: a saga that captivates from the very first page, breaking our hearts while making our spirits soar.

Abbe Deighton is a woman who has lost her bearings. Once a child of the African plains, she is now settled in Hawaii, married to a minister, and waging her battles in a hallway of monotony. There is the leaky roof, the chafing expectations of her husband’s congregation, and the constant demands of motherhood. But in an instant, beginning with the skid of tires, Abbe’s battlefield is transformed when her three-year-old daughter is killed, triggering in Abbe a seismic grief that will cut a swath through the landscape of her life and her identity.

What an enthralling debut this is! What a storyteller we have here!

Talk about laying it on thick. The second book, the one that looks like it could be good, is Nothing is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn, by Alice Mattison.

One quiet spring day in 1989, Constance Tepper arrives from Philadelphia to watch over her mother's Brooklyn apartment and her orange cat. Con's mother, Gert, has left town to visit her old friend Marlene Silverman in Rochester. Marlene has always seemed alluring and powerful to Con, and ever since Con was a little girl, the long-standing bond between Gert and Marlene has piqued her curiosity. Now she finds herself wondering again what keeps them together.

Con's week in Brooklyn will take a surprising turn when she wakes to find that someone has entered her mother's apartment and her own purse is missing. Stranded, with no money, she begins to phone family and friends. By the end of that week, she will experience a series of troubling discoveries about her marriage, her job, and her family's history, and much of her life will be changed forever.

These two books will be going away to Value Village next door, where maybe someone will decide to take them home and love them. I hope everyone enjoys the books they got.