If We Are What We Read, Than Who Are Barack Obama and John McCain?

Heidi Benson of the San Francisco Chronicle asks this question in a recent article published in the Chronicle. Among the favorites listed by the candidates are For Whom the Bell Tolls, All Quiet on the Western Front, & History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on McCain's list, and Moby-Dick, Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson), & Song of Solomon on Barack Obama's list.

These lists are kind of interesting, in that way where you are sick of hearing how Obama was raised by his grandmother and McCain was a POW and you need to read something a little different. Benson asks a few Bay Area authors to chime in on what they think about the lists. Susan Griffin, while analyzing McCain's choices, says, "This strange conglomeration leads me to wonder if the confusion McCain has displayed throughout his campaign may reflect a profound inner ambivalence."

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) may have my favorite response to the lists when he said:

All of us polish those lists for public view, and you can't get more public than running for president. But these lists do tell us something, even if it's not the truth.

Obama's list says that he'd like to convey a willingness to face heartbreak and irony, that he's open to the new and to the experimental, but that he's serious of purpose and true of heart.

McCain's list says that sure, he reads books, but he's not a pansy boy.

Read the article at the above link, and weigh in on what you think.

InDigest out.