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George W. Bush, bookworm

zakur

Illuminator
Z
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Aug 3, 2001
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Article

Every week, we're learning something new and incongruous about President Bush. Two weeks ago, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow swore on a stack of Tom Clancy novels that Mr. Bush really has taken to wearing black turtlenecks and reading Camus' "The Stranger" at his Crawford ranch.

[...]

The list of 60 books Mr. Bush is alleged to have read this year reveals an intellect of Promethean scale and ambition. He's read 10 books more than his chief adviser, Karl Rove, who presumably continues to run the country with Mr. Cheney while Mr. Bush wanders the aisles of Barnes & Noble.

A partial list of the books Mr. Bush is alleged to have devoured between mountain biking and weight lifting two hours a day includes Edvard Radzinsky's "Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar," John Barry's "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History," Geraldine Brooks' "Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women" and "Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

[...]

Mr. Bush's summer reading list is formidable, clocking in at 25 books. The list includes the three Lincoln books previously mentioned, "After Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader" by Brian Latell, "Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different" by Gordon Wood, "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War" by Nathaniel Philbrick, "Polio: An American Story" by David Oshinsky and "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero" by David Maraniss.

And while contemporary writers exert a powerful pull on Mr. Bush's imagination, he also managed to reread Shakespeare's two greatest tragedies, "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" just to keep his literary allusions sharp and pungent.

Frankly, if this list is true (and I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the White House press office), Mr. Bush has fallen off the wagon of American anti-intellectualism that has served him so well and is now flagrantly engaged in the greatest presidential reading spree in the republic's history.
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Interesting change of direction for Bush's PR team. He's no longer the ordinary, brush-clearing, guy-you-would-want-to-have-a-beer-with everyman. Now he's a history and philosophy loving egghead?

Instead of getting his iPod playlist, rugged ranch work photos, and stories of his mountain biking prowess, instead we are fed this mammoth list of literature he has allegedly consumed over the past 6 months. Call me skeptical.
 
Has anyone else seen that sputtering interview Bush gave to the one reporter who was asking about the different books he has been reading and at one point Bush said "I read three Shakespeares last week"?

Too funny!
 
Crossbow said:
Has anyone else seen that sputtering interview Bush gave to the one reporter who was asking about the different books he has been reading and at one point Bush said "I read three Shakespeares last week"?

Too funny!
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They should have asked him "what Act" did you like the most? Or "what impressed you about the story?"

Or, perhaps more on-point: "were they the original "Classic Comics" or a new, reprint?"
 
Force him to do "Book It!" .
That way, we'd know what he's read and he'd get a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.
Win, win.
 
Has anyone advised him that looking at pictures in a book does not count as "reading" them?

G-Dub said:
That was easy! It was just a picture of the book writin' guy! Where's my next one?
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For every thread, there is an appropriate Onion reference:

Bush Regales Dinner Guests With Impromptu Oratory On Virgil's Minor Works

Bush confessed that he has "long held a fascination with the classical world," noting that his love of Roman history influenced his decision to enter politics.

"Virgil was born in the year 70 B.C.—let's see, that would be during the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius The Great and Marcus Licinius Crassus, if I'm not mistaken," Bush said. "It is said that while Virgil's mother was with child, she dreamt she gave birth to a laurel branch, which, upon touching the ground, sprang up into a full-grown tree, its branches laden with ripe fruits and flowers. The next morning, she gave birth to Virgil. The legend goes that Virgil was born without crying, so mild was his countenance."
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Dubya - The Mental Giant?

Why don't they invent a story that has a minuscule chance of being credible?
 
Anybody else see Talladega Nights? Did you notice that the French driver is reading "The Stranger" (in French of course)? I wonder if there is any connection.

Daredelvis
 
daredelvis said:
Anybody else see Talladega Nights? Did you notice that the French driver is reading "The Stranger" (in French of course)? I wonder if there is any connection.

Daredelvis
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Ah, and Jake Gyllenhaal's character reads L'Etranger on the toilet in the movie Jarhead.

As Rebecca would say...NO COINCIDENCES!
 
Just burned through Finnegans Wake in Gaelic... bhos tighinn uile!

Last night I took a bath and read all four volumes of Aquaman.
 
In effort to fit in, insert arbitrary, generic and yet clever rant about Bush's lack of education/intelligence/commitment to the democratic process/competence here.
 
Camus does Bush
Up in the sky, in Air Force One. Everything on the ground got smaller as we went higher. Made me think. Love that. Rove sitting down a ways. Bolten up here. No reporters. Cheney on the other side there. Secret Service, Marines. One of the Secret Service guys was Muslim. Ali something. I said, "Do you mind if I call you 'Chaim'? I have trouble remembering 'Ali.'" Cracked everyone up. He said it was fine. Great guy. Incredible that some of these people are self-exploders. Once saw a Saudi prince fart so hard he blew himself off his chaise lounge and into the pool. Whole different ballgame with the royal family. Great hosts. Great entertainers. Cheney asked Ali if he could look at his gun. Loves guns, that Cheney. Loves to hunt. Last Thanksgiving he actually brought down a flock of turkeys with a shoulder-to-air missile. Powerful men need hobbies. Dad used to collect famous thank-you notes. Had one from a Roman emperor. LaGuardia, I think.
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NPR's "Wait, wait, don't tell me!" show had a funny bit on this. After mentioning that Dubya had just "breezed" through Camus, one of the panelists said, "Why Camus?"

Roy Blunt Jr. said, "it's short".
 
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