It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, "I'm on my second. Where are you?" Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.
By coincidence, we were both reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." The president jumped to a slim early lead and remained ahead until March, when I moved decisively in front. The competition soon spun out of control. We kept track not just of books read, but also the number of pages and later the combined size of each book's pages -- its "Total Lateral Area."
We recommended volumes to each other (for example, he encouraged me to read a Mao biography; I suggested a book on Reconstruction's unhappy end). We discussed the books and wrote thank-you notes to some authors.
At year's end, I defeated the president, 110 books to 95. My trophy looks suspiciously like those given out at junior bowling finals. The president lamely insisted he'd lost because he'd been busy as Leader of the Free World.
Really Karl? I did that same contest at the local library--when I was six. Anyone who actually reads books knows that reading the words off the page is half the job, at best. The hard part is digesting the book, getting to its essential themes and then weighing them against your own body of knowledge. Look I love books, was raised in the
business of publishing books and printing books. But watching a pundit--or president--brag about reading a book a week, is like watching a freshly-minted 21-year old get smashed at a wine-tasting. Only a rookie would set that sort of goal--and then brag about it. Either that or, you know, someone who doesn't really read...
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Five bucks says they finish the Twilight series before The Forever War.
Bush Legacy Tour rides again. Anybody who isn't a wingnut who is impressed by this let alone actually believes it needs their head examined.
Loved this part as well:
"In the 35 years I've known George W. Bush, he's always had a book nearby. He plays up being a good ol' boy from Midland, Texas, but he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don't make it through either unless you are a reader."
I like the admission that Bush likes to play cowboy. And I believe he was a C (or worse) student at Yale and as an HBS alum, I can guarantee you that you can make it through HBS without being much of a reader. Classes are graded on a curve so while you may end up in the bottom tier for a few classes, you can skate by just as one could in college. Now thats a waste of 2 yrs and $100K but I've seen it.
I am so impressed, a book reading contest! I wonder if they got special t-shirts like my kids got from the library for summer reading! The leader of the free world reading for competition sake versus you know, actually doing it to become more learned, enlightened, educated... That's just *awesome* as Dubya likes to say.
Bush reads? Now that's a revelation.
Can't help thinking of a Fish Called Wanda:
"Apes don't read Nietzsche!"
"No Otto, apes do read Nietzsche, they just don't understand him!"
Awwwww. Did Mr. President's pediatrician get him enrolled in the Reach Out and Read program?
And yeah, TNC, I remember being really, really proud of my book count in 4th grade. I haven't really been keeping a tally since then.
Ivy's don't fail students. It would call their selection process into question.
Anyway, isn't it time to move on? I know it's the doldrums between Xmas and New Years, but this post is pretty (dare I say it?) weak sauce. Do we really care what GWB does or doesn't read?
check out this celebration of another fine university graduate brought to you by USC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlfSAlakdOw
the american establishment fellating itself in 2 min 38 sec
Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza here we come!
(hoping Book-It wasn't just at my school)
This is the same person who said he didn't read newspapers and who required policy briefings to be summarized in one-page memos.
In high school, I read The Mayor of Casterbridge. I had to, it was for class, but there were so many other books demanding my attention, I read it as quickly as I could to get through it. The sum total of what I remember of The Mayor of Casterbridge:
1. I really didn't like it.
2. There was something about the lead character's horse. Maybe its name was stupid?
3. It was the only essay I got a B on in four years of English class.
I was old enough to know better then. Those two certainly should be now.
This theme is laced throughout his presidency.
Iraq is little more than an ongoing competition with daddy.
" The hard part is digesting the book, getting to its essential themes and then weighing them against your own body of knowledge."
And Coates knows Rove and Bush didn't because....?
Unless Coates has some inside information, this item is just a nyuck, nyuck item on the level of Stooges dialogue.
Tony: I care what Bush reads and doesn't read. I care that he only reads Cliffs Notes versions of legal opinions that undermine the Constitution. He was "elected to lead, not to read" in the words of President Schwarzenegger.
Seth: Yes, we did Book-it, too. Awesome.
As much as I loathe Rove and Bush,I have to disagree with the tone of this post. I've been an avid reader since I was 3 and although I'm closing in on 30 now, I still set myself quantitative goals from time to time. For example: most years I read 75-85 books (I keep a book log) and this year I read only 33. So next year I'm making a point of a library card in my new city and a once-a-week trip.
The difference is in being competitive and bragging about it -- *that's* what's so juvenile. My friends are avid readers also and sometimes, if we're reading the same book, we might race to the end so we can discuss it, but the last time I kept a record of words-per-day was in the 6th grade, when my teacher made me. (And she didn't believe my true and honest counts.)
Oh fug. Were they trying to turn us off of reading?
What I remember is that the mayor's jacket's elbows were shiny from wear, and that he had half a sandwich in his pocket.
Whether or not Rove's piece is truthy, you need to digest some math. Claims of reading 95 or 100 books in a year mean a rate of 2 a week, not 1.
Really, why should anyone believe Rove about this? Has he proven a reliable source on ANYTHING? His public comments are nothing but fantasy designed to spin public opinion, to frame public discourse to Rove's (and his client's) advantage. Period. Truth is not a factor.
I do not for a minute believe Bush really reads ANY books. Not in the usual sense of the word "read". Perhaps he looks at them, realizes there are printed words and sentences in them, perhaps even mentally (or out loud) mouths the sounds associated with the words, but "reads"--not a chance.
When I was in school, "comprehension" was considered an integral aspect of reading. What comprehension has Bush displayed?
Tony, you remember more than me! I salute you. What a slog.
Ezra Klein has a nice take on all this, too.
Tony: I must defend the honor of my alma mater- Cornell has some of the most rigorous grading standards in the nation and fail out plenty of students.
But your point still stands as Harvard and Yale are way, way on the other end of the garde inflation scale and you have to {not} work pretty hard to be a C student up there.
/threadjack.
What Karl Rove needs to tell us is not how many books the soon-to-be-former POTUS waded through, but how many packets of crayons he used in the process.
@Green Apologies. When I wrote Ivy's (misspelled, natch) I really meant Yale and Harvard
@Persia The year before they made us read Anna Fucken Karinina! Well they tried to. I only got this far: Happy blogs are all alike; every unhappy blog is unhappy in its own way.
Tony, me old mate, some unkind person is going to ask if you got past the title of the wonderful Anna KarEnina. Just a gentle hint.
Nope. I was a year too old when it came to my school, but my dyslexic little brother was constantly begging me for book summaries. "Read these and I'll do the dishes your week." He did get through The Mouse and the Motorcycle and Brisby on his own, which was damn hard for him, so Book-It served its purpose.
"Really, why should anyone believe Rove about this? Has he proven a reliable source on ANYTHING? "
I do believe he was correct on who would win the Presidency at least twice.
I do believe he was correct on who would win the Presidency at least twice.
Posted by pgauge | December 29, 2008 11:51 AM
That rather depends on how precisely one defines "win", doesn't it?
Transliterated from Cyrillic. My spelling's as valid as any other, mutherfucker! ;-)
Tony, unfortunately, the Cyrillic proves you wrong as well:
Анна Каренина NOT Анна Каринина
See the difference? Advice to you: don't try punching above your weight in a language you don't know.
Turning "read a book a week" into a contest sounds very Dubya. Especially the part where they had to go to counting pages and then page aggregate area or something.
Because, you realize, otherwise Dubya would cheat and read "My Pet Goat" and count it as a book. Because the goal has changed from "read more" to "win the contest".
Was there a rule about no repeats?
I heard they started with SuperFudge by Judy Blume and in the end were all the way up to Encyclopedia Brown
Good Job Mr President! Glad you have enough free time to read 2 books per week
I think competing over "lateral area" is the kicker. That's not reading, it's a pissing contest on paper. And pgauge, spunky little Bush defender that you are, the fact that the reading was couched in this way is very good evidence that understanding was irrelevant to them. Serious readers know that several square inches of Shakespeare sonnet inundates square miles of Michael Crichton.
I'm sorry, but anyone who talks about reading "three Shakespeares" is not really getting the point. Compare that to Stephen Greenblatt's account of Bill Clinton on Macbeth in NYRB, and you realize how pathetic these legacy anecdotes about 43 really are.
Didactic pricks are all alike; every pedantic prick is pedantic in his own way.
Seth--Ah, Book It. I LIVED for that contest.
OT: He reads? I need proof.
Didactic pricks are all alike; every pedantic prick is pedantic in his own way.
Didactic pricks are all alike; every pedantic prick is pedantic in his own way.
They are reading fucking HISTORY books, one step up from magazine articles. Dig into some philsosphy, economic theory (no wait, on second thought, skip that), or other type of dense reading and see if you pound through a book a week you bunch of noobs.
I read more challenging stuff while shitting.
But curiously, you aren't the first person I know who misquoted the line as "Apes don't read Nietzsche." I guess it's because Otto mentions Nietzsche a couple of other times in the film.
God, I'm such a geek.
Seriously, I think a lot of you are missing the point here. It goes back to what Chris Rock said about taking care of your kids: you don't get extra credit for doing what you are supposed to do in the first place.
Personally, I think we should take it for granted that Presidents read books. The fact that we have to be reminded of that says way more than Rove intended.
What's striking to me is that, in the last few weeks, it is as if President Bush is pulling off a mask he wore for the last sixteen years. First, his admission that he doesn't take the Bible literally, and now this?
I'm sure his detractors will think he's simply trying to rewrite himself to gain some respectability as an ex-president, but many of us have long suspected that Bush isn't really the hick people made him out to be. I'm not saying he's a genius, but his country bumpkin shtick was always something of a stage-crafted persona.
His detractors would say that he was a spoiled rich kid who pretended to be a common man, but I think it's more than that. His admission about the Bible leads me to think he's capable of more nuanced thought than he has ever let out during his entire political career, and that he played up the anti-intellectual bit because it was a useful ploy. After all, Methodists aren't known for being simpleminded fundies.
I realize that it has long been true of politicians that the image they project may not coincide with who they are in their ordinary life. But I can't remember any lame duck being this crass in throwing aside the persona that got him to where he is today. He's saying in effect that it was all a sham, that he just did it to get votes. It was always possible, I just never would have expected him to be so blatant about it.
Didactic pricks are all alike; every pedantic prick is pedantic in his own way.
Posted by Tony Comstock (for the third time!) | December 29, 2008 2:39 PM
Indeed, and some are pedantic in triplicate. De te lector, fabula...
We know this is just another silly lie from the Porcine Republican Rove. Bush reads like I ice-skate.
As to the B-school, it is a business, financially associated with the quaint pile across the river. You pays your money and you gets your credential. Intellect is not a prerequisite.
I'm told that Bush only reads the Reader's Digest condensed versions of the books in question. The subjects that are difficult to understand and dirty words are edited out. Therefore, he can prevent un-Christian thoughts from entering his head and stick to his plan of bringing more freedom to Iraqis even though many of them may be already dead while at the same time ignoring the negative liberal media and errant shoes. That's why Bush can read and understand these books so quickly.
The main question President Bush ponders now with the assistance of neocon scholars is whether the dead Iraqis he prays for will go to Christian heaven or some Muslim purgatory. That issue and the question about how many angels can sit on the head of a pin are the soliloquies that gives this President sleepless nights.
Now we know the truth, Cheney was running the country while Bush read.
Monday, December 29, 2008 7:52 PM
Living here in Austin, I've had a longer view of Bush II and his reading habits than many of you. His wife is majorly into books, a former librarian, and arranged to move the Texas Book Festival moved into the prestigious digs of the Texas Capitol building, including sessions in the House and Senate chambers. I think Bush II.1 must've been reading at least since they were dating.
That said, there's no question George Will was right that, even at his best, even that incarnation, he was intellectually incurious. He wouldn't've read just to learn much, much less checked a book if he had questions. I thought he did OK for a Republican, though, as guv and even at first as Prez. He even cared about civil liberties (!).
Bush did, at first, widely employ people who were curious to make up for his lack, notably one Mr. Rove you may've heard of. Rove really was paying attention to all those books he read, trust me (alas, or likely he woulda lost).
On 9/12/01, Bush II.2 showed up, a very different man, instacorrupted in one day. He immediately started pushing the most intrusive and corrupt solutions, including a KGB-like internal spy service, and there's pretty much no evidence he tried to check Administration mistakes or corruption of any kind after that date, either. We don't yet know why, really. It could've been because he hadn't read about executives in similar surprise or pressure situations, or any of a ton of other reasons. We'll have to wait a few decades to be sure, I guess.
The funniest thing about this story is that Doris K. Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" had not been published yet when Bush and Rove were "reading" it during the first week of 2006!
Uh, Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (October 25, 2005) (Amazon)
Hey you Putz's (or is it putzii?),
Your complaints and observations of how "what he reads defines him" or "I was in a contest for reading when I was six" miss the point.
GW never mentioned his reading or his enjoyment and reasons for reading. Karl Rove (Mr. Big-mouth himself) did.
GW happens to be smarter than you would like to believe so you have to continue to criticize him.
I don't think our President is the one with the small mind...
He has served us for almost eight years and put up with your skulking, cowardly sniping all that time. The vocal minority are just a nuisance and I for one appreciate his not getting down in the muck with you all.
GW, enjoy your retirement and thank you for your service and for making the hard no-win decisions on our behalf.
WRC
Walker Texas Ranger writes: "GW, enjoy your retirement and thank you for your service and for making the hard no-win decisions on our behalf."
You got the "no-win" part right. Dumbya is the biggest loser in American history, and the name "Bush" should be a synonym for "shit" for the rest of time.
The worst thing about Dumbya was his celebration of failure. Giving a Medal of Freedom to a useless, lying war criminal like Rumsfeld was a signature moment in the Bushpig administration.
I hope his retirement features a daily shoe to the face.
I couldn't care less how much Bush reads per se. I only care that he reads enough to know what the hell he's doing as President. Whatever he was reading clearly was insufficient or detrimental, because he never knew what he was talking about. What good is encyclopedic knowledge of American railroad development (Bush claimed he read a book on this) if you channel it into zero transportation or other infrastructure initiatives???
That said, if Rove's statement is true, then Bush was spending way too much time pleasure reading instead of working. Team of Rivals is no Salman Rushdie tome, but it's a lot of information and reading it properly takes a while. Even when I was on vacation, it took me over a week.
GW, enjoy your retirement and thank you for your service and for making the hard no-win decisions on our behalf.
WRC
Posted by Walker | December 30, 2008 10:11 AM
In sum, heckuva job, Bushie!
Yes, a city destroyed by contemptible incompetence, an unnecessary war and tens of thousands dead, America's reputation trashed, an economy in shreds, and a deficit to amaze the ages. Truly some hard, no-win decisions there!
Tony wrote: "Ivy's don't fail students. It would call their selection process into question."
Dick Cheney failed out of Yale. Ivys don't hesitate to fail students who don't come from money. They just don't want to offend the families of legacy admissions.