The White House Salon, II

The first installment of this post was over at ninme's, where she noted Irwin Stelzer's account of a White House lunch, one of many the Prez hosts on a regular basis to discuss books. I read her link, plus the slight variation Stelzer published in the Weekly Standard. In both versions I was a bit puzzled by Stelzer's account of Michael Novak's assertion that there is absolute evil but no absolute good. Knowing Novak to be orthodox, I figured he either misspoke or Stelzer misheard him, since the opposite is the case. What really happened is slightly different, as Novak himself explains here.

In the course of the explanation, Novak drops this little tidbit:

the president and Karl Rove are competing to see who can read the most books during 2007. For the first six weeks, the President was ahead. But by the beginning of March, Rove had surged ahead to twenty books, to the President's sixteen. Just to make sure that no one cheats, Rove also keeps track of the number of pages and the number of lines per page.

Have you read 16 books since January? I've read two, with excursions into others. I'm sure the nutroots will say Green Eggs & Ham doesn't count. Har-har. But I wonder what's on Bill Maher's reading list? See what you have time for when you don't watch tv or read papers? Or blog? Curtsy: No Left Turns.