That former President Bill Clinton is an avid reader is not news.
What is news is that he reads book blogs. (Can you hear me now, Mr. President?).
As Carolyn Kellogg, lead writer for the Los Angeles Times blog Jacket Copy and laundry-challenged because of it (tell me about it, sister!), today reports, she just about fell over when the former POTUS wrote a note to her in response to a Fourth of July post of hers about his reading habits. After offering a correction of fact, he then provided an unsolicited heads-up on what he’s been reading lately. The list below includes his asides.
1. Steven Johnson’s “The Invention of Air” and “The Ghost Map,” esp. #1
2. Tom Zoellner’s “Uranium”
3. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” his best book.
4. John Bogle’s “Enough”
5. Selden Edwards’ “The Little Book”
6. Richard North Patterson’s “Eclipse”
7. Andrew Greeley’s “The Cardinal Sins” (now almost 30 years old).
I read Andrew Greeley’s The Cardinal Sins when it was originally released while a story analyst at Lorimar Productions. Plot: Two young, lifelong friends enter seminary together but their lives soon dramatically diverge. One achieves success as a scholar but is often in conflict with his superiors in the Church. In contrast, the other, ambitious one rises smoothly and steadily through the Church hierarchy, only to fall prey to the temptations of lust and power.
I thought the point of escapist literature was to escape reality.