Favorite Books

I recently came upon the following from How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren:  “Reading a good book should be a conversation between you and the author.  Presumably he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with this book.  But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying.  Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author.  It is the highest respect that you can pay him.”

By reading others works we learn of new things, new ideas.  These ideas transpose themselves in diverse ways, affecting others reading the same book in different ways.  No one book says the same thing to everyone.   This brings me to the following list that showed up on MSN.com just the other day.  It’s a list that was created in September 2011 for National Read a Book Day of celebrities’ favorite books.  After reading the list please feel free to comment on what your favorite book is, we would love to hear what YOUR favorite book is!

Ben Affleck- Shah of Shahs by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Michelle Obamba- Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Judd Apatow- A Death in the Family by James Agee

Samantha Bee- The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Harold Bloom- Henry IV, Part 1 by William Shakespeare

George H. W. Bush- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Don Cheadle- If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes

Bill Clinton- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by  Maya Angelou

Anderson Cooper- A Death in the Family by James Agee

Mark Cuban- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Nora Ephron- The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Chris Matthews- A Thousand Days by Arthur M. Schlesinger 

Barack Obama- Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gwyneth Paltrow- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Robert Pattinson- Charles Baudelaire: Complete Poems by Charles Baudelaire

Amy Poehler- I Like You by Amy Sedaris

Natalie Portman- Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander

Bill Simmons- Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

Jay Z- Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav