The US president’s summer reading list has recently been at the centre of a media furore. The White House released a statement that Barack Obama had bought two books at Martha’s Vineyard bookstore to add to the three he had brought with him from Washington. Other sources say that Obama actually bought five books at Bunch of Grapes, which is reputedly an extremely liberal bookseller. We’re unclear as to the whole truth but we’ll keep you posted as more revelations filter through.
The list – as it stands – is as follows:
1. The Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrell
2. Rodin’s Debutante by Ward Just
3. Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
4. To The End Of The Land by David Grossman
5. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
6. Room by Emma Donoghue
7. Frost by Marianna Baer
8. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Inevitably, American commentators have constructed wild theories regarding the list and what it reveals about their president. Many noted the absence of non-fiction and the worrying implication this may have in terms of the president’s grasp on reality. Choices 7 and 8 were widely speculated to be gifts for his daughters. However, it is also surely politically vital to consider what the teenage supernatural thriller and dystopian classic could respectively reveal about the foibles and aspirations of the Democrat leader. In the National Review Online, Tevi Troy was damning about Mr. President’s reading list, even calling on the journalist, pundit and author, Mickey Kaus for ammunition:
This year’s list suggests that Obama needs to consider the messages sent by his reading more carefully. According to Mickey Kaus, the Obama list is ‘heavy on the wrenching stories of immigrant experiences, something the President already knows quite a bit about.’ For this reason, Kaus feels that the list reveals an intellectually incurious president. Either that, or it is ‘a bit of politicized PR BS designed to help the President out.’ In that case, he notes, ‘it’s sending the wrong message.’
Back on our side of the Atlantic, The Spectator Summer Reading List revealed at the beginning of August that David Cameron was planning both on reading Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore and on finishing Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies started while on holiday in — as the PM was sure to make precise — Ibiza. With any luck, although it’s unlikely given the premature termination of his holiday this year and the latter tome’s six hundred and seventy two pages, the darkly comic boarding school romp will give him real insight into how to cure England’s ills.
Fleur Macdonald is editor of The Omnivore.
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