Art Garfunkel: Book Blogger Since 1968

The New Yorker has a brief story about Art Garfunkel (What, you need a Wikipedia link to work out who I mean?) who has been recording and making notes on his voracious reading habit since the late 1960s, beginning with Rousseau's Confessions (oh, go on then) and concluding, for now, in 2007 with book number 1023, Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, which incidentally was made into a rather good film. The Garfunkel Library is right here. From the article:

Candidates for political office, and the reporters who cover them, like to believe that a reading list reveals a great deal. In recent years, the cherished-book list has become as compulsory a component of the Presidential campaign as a church affiliation or a health-care plan. Hillary Clinton named “Little Women” and “The Poisonwood Bible.” Mike Huckabee: the Bible and “Mere Christianity.” Barack Obama: “Song of Solomon” and “Moby-Dick.” John McCain: “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” When mishandled, the book thing can lead to grief, as when Mitt Romney cited “Battlefield Earth,” by L. Ron Hubbard, or when John Edwards, four years ago, went with I. F. Stone’s “The Trial of Socrates,” which earned him the skunk eye from Robert Novak. (“Did [Edwards] know of evidence that Stone received secret payments from the Kremlin?”)

Then there is Art Garfunkel, who is not running for President but who has nonetheless provided the world with a list ...

Here's the link to the New Yorker piece again.

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