Book reading makes people smart. ____________________________ (CNN) â It appears President Obama has to step up his reading pace if he wants to beat his predecessor in one particular measure: how many books a president can polish off a year. In an interview with the BBC Tuesday, Obama said he is currently reading Joseph O'Neill's 270-page novel "Netherland," a book Obama first said he began back in April. If Obama is close to finishing the novel, that puts him on less than a 10 book-a-year pace, far less than the close to 100 books President Bush was reportedly able to finish in the same amount of time. According to former top Bush aide Karl Rove, he and the former president engaged in a friendly wager every year to see who could read more books. In 2006, Bush read 95 books to Roves 110: a Herculean pace of nearly two books a week â in an election year to boot â for the ex-president. But, according to Rove, Bush's reading slowed a bit in the final years of his presidency, finishing a not-too-shabby 51 books in 2007 and at least 40 in 2008. And if that's not impressive enough, Rove also said Bush found time to read the Bible "from cover to cover" every year. While Obama may have had to put aside âNetherlandâ last month in favor of pages of court briefs with a Supreme Court vacancy to fill, it nevertheless appears the president has some summer reading to do.
They all got me beat. I always wondered where I fell in the range of book readers. I probably read 4 or 5 a month, I would read more but I don't feel like going to the library more often than once a month. I used to buy books but a finished book is not much more than storing empty beer cans. I'm not trying to impress anyone with my library.
do you want a president who has time to read 100 books on fiction a year or one that is busy doing the work of the country.? read the bible once a year. lol.anybody with intelligence should be able to figure out the bible is mythical fiction the first time through. you might not like the results but you have to admit obama is tackling problems.
It only follows that a president who presided over two wars and notable natural calamities, and who has taken more vacation days than any American president in history while treating that presidency largely as a 9-to-5 job, should have ample time to while away his free time reading a couple of books a week. The poor guy had to occupy his time somehow.
bush had time to read fiction but could care less about what was happening in the real world: WASHINGTON -- President Bush recently gave an hour-long exclusive interview to Fox TV anchor Brit Hume, who tossed him a series of softball questions. Among them, Bush was asked how he gets his news. Answer: He relies on briefings by chief of staff Andrew Card and national security affairs adviser Condoleezza Rice. He walks into the Oval Office in the morning, Bush said, and asks Card: "What's in the newspapers worth worrying about? I glance at the headlines just to kind of (get) a flavor of what's moving," Bush said. "I rarely read the stories," he said.
I think the book reading was good for the country, otherwise he'd have had more time to screw up more things. Seneca
On the flip side, I did get a fortune cookie once and it read: If you want to hide something from a black man, put it in a book.
All the things that Bush screwed up according to liberals seem to be the things Obama is adopting. Its really funny that Bush was such an idiot, but all the sudden Obama can't seem to bring himself to stop those Bush programs. You can't run and hide from that fact.
Try not to get ahead of yourself. Has it occurred to you that perhaps Obama wishes to be more circumspect about the manner in which he dismantles things than the way in which the Bush administration slapped them together? It's a lot easier being a bull in a china shop when you're not the one who has to clean up and you don't care who does.