Andy directed me to this New York Times story about Barack Obama’s reading habits, and I love it because of the following:

Lincoln, like Mr. Obama, was a lifelong lover of books, indelibly shaped by his reading — most notably, in his case, the Bible and Shakespeare — which honed his poetic sense of language and his philosophical view of the world. Both men employ a densely allusive prose, richly embedded with the fruit of their reading, and both use language as a tool by which to explore and define themselves.

Yes! Obama may be Harvard-educated, but he has followed a Lincolnish self-educating Great Booksy curriculum in his own life. His questioning attitude toward life and his professional pursuits indicates that Obama would wring more meaning from a reading of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax than Bush did from the 95 books he purportedly read last year.

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