Obama's summer reading list is unusual – for a change the WH is pandering to people who can read

[marmar]

from the Guardian UK:



Wrapped up in books
Barack Obama's summer reading list is unusual – for a change the White House is pandering to people who can read

Sady Doyle
guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 August 2009


Ah, the Presidential reading list. Is there any news item more fraught with potential frustration? There are, actually, plenty of said news items. Still, if you genuinely love books, the knowledge of what world leaders are reading (or pretending to read) can cause a unique kind of despair.

When a US president presents his reading list to the world, the selections always seem so uniquely groomed and vetted – full of markedly important books that everyone has read already, blockbuster hits, and biographies of former presidents (always with the biographies of former presidents!), all of which are inoffensive and vaguely admirable and very much on-point and on-message – that one is invariably left with the impression that the lists are carefully prepared for the public eye, and that US presidents either do not read at all or only read Harlequin romance novels and novelizations of Michael Bay movies. The lists are just too unexceptional; they seem to be hiding something. Anyone who reads at all reads at least a few odd or obscure or mediocre books.

President Obama's list of summer holiday reading was released recently; and, for once, there is some slight reason to hope. This is not to say that his list seems completely honest and uncalculated – if the Twilight series is stowed away somewhere in his suitcase, we the public have not heard and probably will not hear about it – but, for once, we have a president who actually seems to read for pleasure.

The list of books Obama admits to reading on his summer vacation includes the following, in non-fiction: John Adams, by David McCullough, which was both a big seller and a Presidential biography (no points on that one) and Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas Friedman – another blockbuster, which (as has been pointed out) he quoted on the campaign trail last year and which is apparently a re-read if it is anything. Both, despite their various merits as books, are fairly disappointing choices. The fiction is where the list picks up. Obama is taking along The Way Home by George Pelecanos, Plainsong, a well-reviewed novel of small-town Midwestern lives by Kent Haruf, and Lush Life by Richard Price. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/30/barack-obama-summer-reading-list

[girl gone mad]

1. Thomas Friedman?

Ick.

[depakid]

2. Supposedly, Bush read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics one summer

:rofl:

No shit:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1PY7C8WA6HABX

[kath]

3. ROFLMAO!!!

[Skittles]

4. bush would be hard-pressed to correctly pronounce "Aristotle"

that ain't no lie