Last week president-elect Barack Obama called Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. It is commonplace for a president-elect to check in with world leaders before they take office but here’s the kicker:
According to the Latin America News Agency, Prensa Latina, Cristina Fernandez “told reporters accompanying her that Obama expressed his desire to visit Argentina, which he called a great country, and recalled his life as university student when he was acquainted with the work of Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges.“
Obama has already been seen carrying books about current events, Fareed Zakaria’s Post American World; poetry, Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems; and history, Fred Kaplan’s new book Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer and he hasn’t even moved into the White House yet!
John Freeman also notes in his blog post at the Guardian, A new deal for US publishers, that Obama is using Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals “as a playbook for picking cabinet members.”
Oh, and the top 3 books on the New York Times Paperback Best Seller list are Obama’s.
To put this in a little perspective here are a couple of biblio low-lights from the Bush Years.
A pretty telling photo as America is pretty much upside down as a result of his 8 years in office.
And remember this interview with Brian Williams? The one on Bush’s reading life where he says that on his recent Crawford vacation he read Camus’s The Stranger and three Shakespeares and that “The key for me is to keep expectations low.” Bush looks like he is jumping out of his skin trying to sound literate.
Change has come to America.
Obama image via Omnivoracious
Bush image via
Previously on Book Patrol:
Barack Obama’s Reading Life
The Role of the Book in the Ascent of Barack Obama
What Barack is Reading