Saturday, July 22, 2006
You, Me, and President Bush: Summer Reading
So Many Books, So Little Time
List of books for summer are out. As usual, a mixed bag. In NPR I found comments by Chris Lehman about Jonathan Ames' favorite --- The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett. I must confess that I am not familiar with Jonathan Ames but Hammett, who lived in San Francisco and served a sentence for his refusal to cooperate with HUAC, is one of my favorites too. Another great author of whodunits from that era is Raymond Chandler. Just finished re-reading The Raymond Chandler Omnibus which contains four of his Philip Marlowe novels. Lady in the Lake, Farewell My Lovely, The Big Sleep, The High Window . Hard to put down.
Nancy Pearl lists "Books That May Make You Skip Work":
- The Brief History of the Dead - Kevin Brockmeier
- The Little Friend - Donna Tartt
- The Girls - Lori Lansens
- Citizen Vince - Jess Walters
I am reading E.L. Doctorow's "The March", a Civil War story. 1864 -- General Sherman's march through Georgia after the burning of Atlanta. I like Doctorow and I have an interest in the Civil War. See "Independence Day 2005 and A Stillness At Appomattox"
These are books for us ordinary people. August is around the corner. That is when the president goes to Crawford for his vacation. Do you have any idea of what the president reads? No fiction for him. He is a heavy hitter, constantly educating his mind, or so it would seem according to The Guardian which listed the books he took with him to Crawford last summer. Among them "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M Barry." One wonders. Well, as long as no one asks him about the contents the president is safe.
*****
"The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination."
--- Elizabeth Hardwick
