Reading Profile...

One good thing about coming back into work is I'm reading the columns again. For some reason I can't find the motivation to read, or blog much for that matter, at home. I've always preferred to do it on the go, in the moment as it were, or from work where I do the majority of my current events reading (and thinking I suppose).

Anyway, on to the point of this post, it turns out that Karl Rove wrote a WSJ column about how many books Bush, who famously doesn't read newspapers (or security briefings warning about impending attacks), has read during the course of his presidency. However, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post isn't impressed.

As might be expected, most of Bush's books have been biographies and histories. Biographies are usually about great men who often did the unpopular thing and were later vindicated. As for histories, they are replete with cautionary tales. That might explain how the 1961 classic, Hugh Thomas's "The Spanish Civil War," made it onto this year's presidential reading list. Had Hitler (and Mussolini) been stopped in Spain, much misery would have been avoided. Substitute Iraq for Spain and you have, for the president, some reassuring bedtime reading.

Burn? I think so. I read anywhere on the order of 20-25 books a year. In my hay days I read a book a week. I can read a "classic" in a sitting. And a 400 page book is like a teaser. A real book starts after 600 pages. I wonder if our reading lists give an insightful view into our personalities. Considering I read nothing but political commentary, historical fiction, and science-fiction/fantasy, I wonder what mine says about me.