Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

Top books about newspapers

Over on The Browser the man who has to answer for employing me at The Times, Peter Stothard, has identifed his top books about newspapers.

I think I might buy the Harold Evans.

A book to read - The Scent of Dried Roses

The tragic death of German goalkeeper Robert Enke is another indication of how hard depression is to counter.

Anyone interested in the articles they have read may be interested in one of my favourite books - The Scent of Dried Roses by Tim Lott.

Lott was himself a depressive with suicidal feelings. But he recovers only for his mother to commit suicide. This leads him to wonder - is suicidal depression genetic, or environmental? Why did it happen?

It is not, strangely enough, a gloomy book. It is witty and insightful. You will learn a lot about a certain slice of England and the thesis about depression that Lott eventually develops is very convincing.

Please do read it.

Why Bush wouldn't honour J.K. Rowling

Honours for Hogwarts? Not in the Bush White House.

Sasha Obama may have been given a birthday tour of the Harry Potter set but the former occupant of the White House was not such a fan of the boy wizard.

In news that you really couldn't make up, it has emerged that J.K. Rowling's name came up in discussions regarding recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. And she was rejected.

Not because of her nationality or Bush's aversion to Professor Snape's hair. But because various members of the White House staff were worried about associating with witchcraft.

Matt Latimer, ex Bush speechwriter, reveals the news in his new book Speech-less,

This was the same sort of narrow thinking that led people in the White House to actually object to giving the author J.K. Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encouraged withcraft.

Barack Obama, forget about health care. This is your chance to prove you have the courage of a true Gryffindor.

Hat Tip: io9

Guess the title of Sarah Palin's new book

We know, we know. It's far too early to be thinking about Christmas presents. But we would fail in our duty if we didn't alert you to a certain little stocking stuffer carefully timed to hit the holiday market.

That's right. Sarah Palin's new book is en route. And she's aiming small with an initial print run of some 1.5 million copies.

The title, revealed by her publishers today, is not the brand of a snowmobile. Instead the former Governor of Alaska has nodded to her renegade side with 'Going Rogue: An American Life'.

As titles go, it's not bad. But we can't help feeling we've missed a trick here. What else could Ms. Palin have called her book? Comment Central suggestions please.

A book to read - The Wisdom of Whores

Elizabeth Pisani has an op-ed in this morning's Times on the new AIDS vaccine. And it reminded me how good her book on AIDS is.

Pisani is a public health worker in the AIDS field. Crucially she has also been a journalist. The result is a wonderfully written account of the quirks of public policy in the field.

You should read it, obviously, if you are interested in AIDS. But I think you will get even more out of it if you just have a general interest in the creation and execution of public policy. Her account of the way that AIDS workers turned into lobbyists and the role of ideology in determining their stance is riveting.

It is also just great fun, because Pisani is good company on the journey around the AIDS field. Do read it.

Classic book titles, rewritten today

There is a brilliant thing doing the rounds on the blogs. It started, it seems, here, and was then taken up here and here.

The idea is this: if classic books were published today, what crass, bombastic title would they be given?

Here follow eight of my favourites, but I thought Comment Central readers might, surely, want to pick up the gauntlet?

Then: The Wealth of Nations

Now: Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them

Then: The Gospel of Matthew

Now: 40 Days and a Mule: How One Man Quit His Job and Became the Boss

Then: Romeo and Juliet

Now: The Teen Sex and Suicide Epidemic: What You Need to Know to Protect Yourself and Your Family

Then: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Now: Subs and Squids: The Journey of a Madman

Then: Genesis

Now: How to Multitask in Six Easy Days

Then: Great Expectations

Now: How to have it all without working a day in your life

Then: The Grapes of Wrath

Now: California Dreamin': Traveling Cheap in the Middle of an Economic Downturn

Then: Book of Genesis

Now: FLOOD! A true story of heartbreak, heroism, and the will to survive

UPDATE: Daniel has just chimed in with this one...

Then: The New Testament

Now: Christonomics: How to turn water into wine and loaves into fishes

Dawkins and God go head to head

Spotted in Manchester Oxford Road Station, by Liam Murray.

McCartney's book about Lennon

Researching my column about Brian Epstein, I consulted the latest edition of Hunter Davies's excellent book The Beatles.

Perhaps others have noticed this before me - indeed I am sure they have - but did you know that Paul McCartney has written a book (or at least a booklet) about his relationship with John Lennon?

Davies records a discussion he had with McCartney in 1981: 

I suggested that he should write it all down, or tape it, record in his words what he think was the relationship with John, exorcise it once and for all, then stick it in a drawer and forget it.

Here was the reply:

‘I might. I did that after being in jail. I’ve written my feelings about it. I wasn’t allowed pencil and paper in jail, and it was all I wanted, so when I came home I wrote it straight out. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want that usual publishing scene. It’s just for me. It’s about 20,000 words. Linda and one of two other people have read it and think it’s good.

I got a private printer, just to print for me one copy, one only. I’ve got it.

I just wanted a plain white cover and inside, just black words on white paper. On cheap white paper. I wanted it like an Olympia press book. Just a cheap little thing. It fits in the pocket, just six inches by about four. I did for a time think of publishing a few and selling them off the back of a barrow. Telling no one, just suddenly selling them in the street, for a few bob. But I didn’t want a big thing.

Then I heard that some pop musician had already done this, so I didn’t want it to look like copying. So I have just one copy. I’ll let you read it sometime. Tell me what you think.

The three most popular books in Guantanamo Bay

The ever inspiring Marbury points out that there are now 13,500 books in the library at Guantanamo Bay, serving the remaining 229 prisoners.

And when the London based, pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat sent a reporter out there recently, he asked the librarian, in what must have been a fairly surreal encounter, which books were requested most frequently.

So we now know the most popular read material among the Guantanamo prisoners. The three most requested book, followed up by a string of Muslim religious volumes, are apparently:

1) The Harry Potter novels

2) Cervantes’ Don Quixote

3) Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father

It makes sense to read up on the guy who holds the keys to your prison - especially if he has any sort of connection to the Muslim world.

Harry Potter is so pervasive that it somehow doesn't suprise that is has penetrated even this darkest corner of the world. But Don Quixote?

Do they know [wonders Juan Cole] that Miguel Cervantes fought at the second Battle of Lepanto in 1571 in which the Holy League defeated the Ottoman empire at sea, and that later on his ship was captured by the Algerians and he spent 5 years imprisoned and enslaved in Algiers before being ransomed-- thus reversing an element in their own biographies?

Intriguingly, there's a tiny insight into how these reading choices affect the world view of the prisoners in this piece for In These Times, written by the lawyer H Candace Gorman back in 2007.

In it, he describes meeting a potential client, a 36-year-old Algerian prisoner, for the first time:

… I kept our conversation light. We spent a long time discussing the Harry Potter books, his favorite books at the Guantánamo library.

Ali sees parallels between George W. Bush and J.K. Rowling’s arch-villain, Voldemort. Guantánamo is the real-world equivalent of Azkaban, the cheerless prison guarded by the soulless “tormentors.”

It seems almost natural that fact and fantasy collide in Guantánamo, the prison camp dreamed up by the Bush administration lawyers.

Checks and balances, constitutional protections and longstanding legal traditions all dissolve before their fanciful “unitary executive theory.”

Obama's summer reading list

You can’t have the job, (well, not for three years anyway), and you probably can’t afford the $20 million holiday home. But now you can have the reading list.

The White House’s Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton revealed today the five books that Obama has taken on holiday to Martha’s Vineyard. They are as follows:

The Way Home by George Pelecanos

Hot Flat and Crowded by Tom Friedman

Lush Life by Richard Price

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

John Adams by David McCullough