Every so often, I (like many readers) go through my books and get rid of ones that I’ve read and won’t read again, or ones that I’ve decided that I won’t ever read. Last weekend, I did just that, and a couple of dozen books got pulled off the shelf and headed toward the door.

One of the books I went back and forth on was “Open Season,” the first book in a Vermont mystery/police procedural series by Archer Mayor. There are 20 books, featuring protagonist Joe Gunther. I think I became intrigued by the series a few years ago because someone compared it to K.C. Constantine’s Rocksburg series (which I love).

But I’ve had “Open Season” for a few years and haven’t cracked it, and so this past weekend, I put it in the library donation pile.

And then on Wednesday, I’m checking the Book Festival’s Twitter account (@WVBookFestival), and I see that we’ve been followed.

By Archer Mayor. Author of “Open Season.”

It’s hard to do a full-body double-take when you’re sitting down, but I think I pulled it off.

Anyway, I know a sign when I see one. “Open Season” has been pulled out of the pile, and I’ll be reading it. Soon. (And if you’d care to join me, Mayor says on his website that “Open Season” is being offered as a free e-book for a limited time.)

Didn’t say much (that is, anything) about the Pulitzer Prize winners earlier this week. But if you want to learn more about some of them, Book TV (the weekend programming of C-SPAN2) is featuring several of them this weekend.

The history winner, “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,” by Eric Foner, will be featured at 9:45 a.m. Saturday. (We talked a little about Foner’s book when he won the Lincoln Prize earlier this year.)

At 11 a.m. Saturday, biography winner Ron Chernow will talk about “Washington: A Life,” his biography of George Washington.

Then, at 11:45 a.m. Saturday, “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,” by Siddhartha Mukherjee, the 2011 nonfiction winner, will be featured.

Other Pulitzer winners included Jennifer Egan’s fantastic “A Visit From The Goon Squad” in the fiction category; “Clybourne Park” by Bruce Norris, for drama; and “The Best Of It: New and Selected Poems” by former U.S. poet laureate Kay Ryan in the poetry category.

The American expatriate author Henry James was born on this day in 1843.

A generation of schoolchildren just instinctively recoiled in horror.

James was one of the towering figures of late 19th-century/early 20th-century literature, but he’s mostly known today by students who were forced to read him in high school. Even a figure as august as the critic Cyril Connolly said he enjoyed reading about James more than actually reading him.

But there’s no denying that he was a terrific writer; indeed, some have argued for him as the greatest American writer ever. He’s not easy to read; some of his sentences are self-parodyingly long. But the man could turn a phrase and tell a story, no doubt.

Having read a few of his works, my favorite remains the Victorian ghost story, “The Turn of the Screw.” So here, on his 168th birthday, is the opening of that book, read as the Video of the Week:

As close readers of this blog may know, I’m a big fan of Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda. The son of a small-town Ohio steelworker, Dirda is better than anyone I’ve ever encountered at taking big literary concepts and making them accessible to people who don’t have a fancy literary education. As Michael Kinsley wrote in a blurb for one of his books, “Michael Dirda is the best-read man in America. But he doesn’t rub it in.”

In his book “Classics for Pleasure,” Dirda leaves out authors like Shakespeare, Austen and Tolstoy — not because they’re not great, but because everyone knows them — and talks about authors as varied as Jules Verne, Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer and Edward Gorey. He helps readers understand that classics got that way not because some stodgy academician pointed at them and said so, but because people enjoyed reading them, over and over, and passed them on to future generations.

So this week’s Video of the Week is Michael Dirda at the 2009 National Book Festival, talking about “Classics for Pleasure”:

Because we brought you the finalists last month, it’s only right that we report that “Managing A Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way” has won Great Britain’s Diagram Prize, given to the oddest book title of the year.

You’re welcome.

Some things are best presented without comment. In that vein, I offer the following Associated Press story:

LONDON — Metalwork, multicolored mutts and a Mongol warrior are in the running for Britain’s quirkiest literary award, the Diagram Prize for year’s oddest book title.

The six finalists announced Friday include “8th International Friction Stir Welding Symposium Proceedings,” canine personality guide “What Color is Your Dog?” and “Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way.”

Also in the running are organ procurement study “The Generosity of the Dead,” romance novel “The Italian’s One-Night Love Child” and “Myth of the Social Volcano,” a look at demographics in China.

The prize, run by trade magazine The Bookseller, was founded in 1978.

Its rules say the books must be serious and their titles not merely a gimmick.

The winner, to be decided by public vote, will be announced March 25.

The award carries no cash prize, but prize administrator Philip Stone said last year’s champion, “Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes,” saw its sales leap from half a dozen copies a week to 95 copies in the seven days after winning.

“You can’t buy that kind of publicity,” he said.

Other previous champions include “Bombproof Your Horse,” “Highlights in the History of Concrete” and “The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.”