Thanks SCION. I followed your advice and did it all over again. I think I know what I did wrong--twice.
This is with the assumption wiping the SD card and re-installing the autonooter wasn't all or part of the solution, which I didn't do the 2nd time.
Reset NC to factory clean version (twice). (Somehow managed to get on the N screen reboot loop again). This time when I did the nooter I realized when I got to the Gmail portion I had been typing in my Gmail info instead of just syncing per the instructions. This time I did the sync, and now it looks like the Google Books app works perfectly as does Google Maps (which force-closed once the first time I opened it) this time.