Obama's Library

On July 7th, Salon.com posted an article on the books that have influenced Obama.

If your interested the article can be found here:

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2008/07/07/obama_books/

Anyway, it got me thinking. It would be interesting to examine the books Obama has read, owns, and even books Obama should read. I didn't see anyone working on it yet, so I decided to post the flag myself.

Anyone is welcome.

But he's alive. Maybe someone needs to invite him to LT, and he can do the entering himself.

According to Laura Miller's article in Salon.com about Obama's literary tastes:

"Among the authors he favored during his years of intensive reading were Herman Melville, Toni Morrison and E.L. Doctorow (cited as his favorite before he switched to William Shakespeare). He has also mentioned Philip Roth, whose struggles to shrug off the strictures of Jewish American community leaders must have resonated with the young activist."

While in Chicago, Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project, a church-based group following the grass-roots organizing principles laid out by Saul Alinsky.

Alinksy's published in 1971 "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals."

He's probably a little busy.

Plus, the problem is in the heat of the election, he might pull a Mitt Romney and list Battleship Earth as his favorite book, or just pull out the usual political goto books:

1. Bible
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
3. Abraham Lincoln

> 4

He's probably a little busy.

He lives near me. I'd be happy to go to his house and set up an account for him and catalogue his books. Then if when he's elected, I could be the Presidential Thingamabrarian!

> 5

I've been banging at my OED trying to find a perfect term for a library stalker.

Bibliomania?

Justinian's Institutes 4.4.1 uses the verb adsectari for stalking. An adsectator would be a stalker. An adsectator librorum gratia would be one who stalks for the sake of books.

If this isn't satisfactory, I suggest voting for McCain.

More than satisfactory. Makes me feel like I need to start boning up on my Cicero and Quintilian.

If I voted for McCain (in lieu of his Gas-Tax Holiday Pseudo-Economics), I would be quickly labeled by my co-workers -- to use a latin Greek term -- a koprosphagein ... or one who consumes/believes? their own crap.

But thanks, you made my day with your post.

I think koprophagein (Gr.) includes consuming both your own, or anyone else's, crap. This is the kind of thing that gives Greek its greatness.

And that is also why so much of our political rhetoric AND secret college fraternizing is indebted indeedy to those dead but not forgotten Greeks and Latins...

Good catch, I usually make an ass of myself when I'm trying to act cleverer than I am.

With Obama's recent trip to Martha's Vinyard, we've been given another list of Obama's books.

Obviously, just like during the campaign, and similar to other Presidents before, I'm sure some of the reading material is nothing more than pose, but it is still interesting to see what his pose is.

According to John Dickerson over at Slate in his article, 'Barack's Book Bag', the books Obama is going to be reading are:

1. The Way Home by George Pelecanos
2. Lush Life by Richard Price
3. Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Tom Friedman
4. John Adams by David McCullough
5. Plainsong by Kent Haruf

I hadn't been very good at updating this, so doing a little housekeeping, according to a New York Times article published around, October 2008 , some of the books and authors Obama listed as being influential:

Authors

1. Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. Thomas Jefferson
3. Mark Twain
4. Abraham Lincoln
5. James Baldwin

Books

1. W. E. B. DuBois’ - The Souls of Black Folk
2. Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail
3. Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
4. Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American
5. Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
6. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward
7. John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle
8. Robert Caro’s Power Broker 9. Studs Terkel’s Working 10. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments
10. Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men

Theology and philosophy influences

1. Friedrich Nietzsche
2. Reinhold Niebuhr
3. Paul Tillich