Speaking of book lists (see post of a few days ago), Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal column reveals that he and President Bush have had a yearly book-reading contest since New Year's Eve 2005.
And if Rove is to be believed (one would have healthy reason to be skeptical of anything these guys assert) their reading habits are if not prodigious at least substantial. Rove says he outdid the president each year, with Bush logging 95 books to Rove's 110 in the first year.
You can carp and quibble about their choices (more fiction, please; and some potent poetry, too; but, hey, The Stranger, by Albert Camus?!), and you can argue vehemently with their existential conclusions and lament loudly their decisions, but... but.... you've got to applaud the fact of reading.
Why do I say more fiction and more poetry? It's hard to explain, but true literature reveals, illuminates, pierces, shreds, unravels, sanctifies, enlightens, and translates reality in more and deeper ways that nonfiction never can.
Think King Lear. Or Hamlet. Or Julius Caesar. Or Macbeth. Or Richard III.
I stand by my list of 22, though.
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