More Showcase Template Questions

Okay, I’m beginning to think that I’m either crazy or am just doing something wrong…

All right. So first, I had to change my homepage to a different static page (now “Welcome”). This is all in Settings>Reading, of course. If I select “Books” for my posts page, it does have “Books” as the page, but it doesn’t recognize the Showcase template – it just shows it as the Sidebar Template.

However, if I put “Welcome” as my static home page and leave the posts page blank, “Books” does register as the Showcase template. I don’t feel like it’s supposed to work this way. LOL Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong?

Second, is there no pagination? The page is only limited to the first 10 or 25 or however number of posts that I specify in Settings>Reading? This doesn’t seem right. How would they find the rest of the posts?

I’m not a coder, but I’m also not a n00b – I’ve been using WP on several sites for about six years now. But I’m so confused!

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks and best wishes,
Kristen