Reading: Truth to Power

There's an election stumbling toward resolution here in the USA, and The New York Times has taken it upon itself to ask a group of notable authors to recommend books to be read by the three candidates still in the race. Here's a link to the feature, with a few samples following of the advice offered -- the feature in the New York Times.

• Lorrie Moore recommends MacBeth for Senator Clinton.
• Scott Turow suggests Eisenhower's Mandate for Change. "Ike was the last nonpolitician elected president, and his moderate vision of American government and the restrained use of American power provide potent lessons in how to truly govern from the center."
• John Edgar Wideman offers Machiavelli's The Prince to Barrack Obama.
• Kathryn Harrison recommends that Hillary Clinton read The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. "An irrefutable explanation of vaunting ambition, the urge to heroism and the cost of our own good opinions of ourselves."
• John Irving points to one of my favorites for John McCain. "And poor old John McCain — who is even older and more old-fashioned than I am — should be forced to read Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn."

So Many Books, So Little Time ...

There's an interesting article in the New York Times Books section currently. Written by William Grimes who begins the article "Volumes to Go before You Die" with "An odd book fell into my hands recently, a doorstopper with the irresistible title 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. That sounds like a challenge, with a subtle insult embedded in the premise."

He goes on to make some interesting observations, of which these three are only a small sample of his point of view ...

• "Two potent factors make “1001 Books” (published in the United States in 2006 by Universe; $34.95) compelling: guilt and time."
• "More than half the books were written after World War II. Already I feel my hackles rising."
• "Drop the bloated, self-indulgent Ada from an otherwise correct Nabokov list (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin) and insert Laughter in the Dark or The Gift. J. M. Coetzee, with 10 novels, can afford to lose 1 or 2. That would open up space for “The Cossacks” by Tolstoy and A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov."

If the average book-lover reads ... let's use the word intelligently ... for sixty years (from age 15 to age 75), that reader would need to read 17 over these books each year (1001 divided by 60 = 16.6833333). Is Professor Peter Boxall's list do'able?