Romney's Reading List

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OK. Ultimately this is sort of inconsequential, but I’m kind of into it anyway. Some Fox News reporter asked former Massachusetts Governor and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney what his favorite novel is. He said Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard, the awkwardly written space epic that pits "man animals" against "psychlos" and was made into possibly the worst movie of all time.

Weird choice, right? There’s something a little amiss about a prospective leader of the free world announcing his love for a poorly reputed, space opera, science fiction novel. One written by the founder of Scientology, no less. He was quick to distance himself from the controversial religion.

“I’m not in favor of his religion by any means, but he wrote a book called Battlefield Earth that was a very fun science fiction book.”
Romney is a Mormon, so if he wanted to choose a classic science fiction potboiler whose religious roots he wouldn’t have to apologize for, he could have said Ender’s Game, written by fellow Church of the Latter Day Saints member Orson Scott Card. And unlike Battlefield Earth, Ender’s Game is actually a decent book.

The novel choice, as an enterprising Boston Herald reporter pointed out, represents a minor gaffe for Romney – his MySpace profile, lists the High School required reading list staple Huckleberry Finn as his favorite book, and makes no mention of anything written by Hubbard.

The story made me pine for big bad Bill Clinton, though. Say what you will about Clinton, no one can deny he is literate. Clinton once said his favorite novel was 1,000 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. When Márquez accused Clinton of claiming to like the book to sway Latin voters. Clinton insisted he was sincere, and, according to Márquez, later recited passages from Don Quixote and Sound and the Fury from memory.

Of course, great taste in literature doesn’t necessarily equal great statesmanship – JFK was allegedly a fan of Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. But after eight years of a president for whom it was a minor news event when he was spotted with a Camus novel, it would be a nice change of pace to get somebody in the White House that read books that aren't sold at airports.

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