1. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
2. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
3. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
4. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
5. First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham
6. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
7. Holy Bible (King James Version)
8. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
9. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
10. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

It is true that President Barack Obama writes books. So, of course, did previous presidents. If you want a real treat, read Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Rough Riders“—or any of his myriad other books of history, biography, travelogue and memoir.

We all know what people mean when they say Obama is a “literary” president—and, sadly, it has less to do with our widely beloved new leader than it does with the apparently unloved man he replaced: George W. Bush. Bush became the poster president for the non-literary set, for people who not only don’t read, but also seem to be rather proud of not reading. Reading, to certain people, is classified as a sort of prissy, fussy, sissified activity, equivalent to daydreaming or lollygagging. It’s a sign of elitism. Of having too much leisure time and too little drive.

Keller goes on to say how she’s more concerned with what is meant when the “literary” tag is applied than with which president is/was more literary. Does it mean you’re a better person, a better leader, that you’re full of virtue?

Yes, things are tough all over. But nobody ever claimed that buying a Chevy Malibu would make you a superior person. Books, though, are supposed to be special. They’re supposed to elevate, illuminate and inspire. We love to laud books as essential to a civilized and satisfying life, as crucial to our well-being as individuals and as a nation. We talk the talk. But do we walk the walk—straight into the nearest bookstore or library, that is?

It’s great to have a literary president of the United States. Now let’s focus on having a United States that makes literature a priority. Toward that end, here’s a novel way to heed Obama’s call to service: Get a book. Read it. Repeat.

You heard the woman! Get a book!

See Obama’s favorite books.

The novelist, playwright and former barrister, who was born in London in 1923, was known and loved for the comic lawyer Rumpole, whose dedication to cheap wine and motto “never plead guilty”, has been his most enduring creation. “He would announce to me on the phone that he thought he ought to ‘do a Rumpole’ on asbos or weapons of mass destruction, or some similar topic about which he felt particularly strongly. Rumpole and John became increasingly fused,” said Lacey. Mortimer originally wrote the series for television, later spinning it off into a series of books and radio programmes.

In October, the New York Times asked Obama to provide a list of books and writers that were significant to him. Here goes – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois’ Souls of Black Folk, Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Robert Caro’s Power Broker, Studs Terkel’s Working, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments, and also Robert Penn’s All the King’s Men – a novel about a corrupt Southern governor (Rod Blagojevich anyone?). And then there were his theology and philosophy influences – Friedrich Nietzsche, Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich.

I am not a fan of George Bush but I do feel a little sorry for him. Obama’s love of reading has earned him massive positive publicity over the past 12 months yet Bush is probably just as much of an avid reader. Karl Rove, Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004 until 2007, said his boss read 95 books in 2006 and another 51 in 2007. Bush is even married to a librarian but all these literary facts are not going to help change his legacy.

1. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
2. A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre
3. Netherland by Joseph O’Neill
4. Indignation by Philip Roth
5. 2666: A Novel by Robert Bolano
6. Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
7. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
8. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
9. Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
10. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

I am determined to read more (maybe I should consider learning to speed read) and part of that encompasses what I am calling “random reads”. I love to go to bookshops or the library and simply look. No agenda, no list just browsing to discover what I shall read.  For me, it adds to the fun.

In a way, this randomness is how I discovered on of my favorite books. In a high-school English class, we were given a choice of novels to read and to do an independent study of. The rest of the class chose In the Heat of the Night by John Ball while I was the only one to choose Nevil Shute’s The Pied Piper. I chose it simply because nobody else did and the books were lovely and new! And as I said, I enjoyed it so much that to this day, it is still one of my favorites.

As I make my discoveries, I’ll be sure to share them on this blog!

Speaking of the year in review, it seems a long time since George MacDonald Fraser died and started 2008 on a very gloomy note. My two most interesting moments of the year have to be Sebastian Horsley being denied entry into the United States because of ‘moral turpitude’ and Nobel judge Horace Engdahl blasting American writing as “Too isolated, too insular.” The first one made the British furious and the second one made the Americans furious.