The DavidCyrus Blog of Wisdom

How Many Books Have You Read This Year?
President Bush says he's up to 60!

Sixty books by mid-August! That's what the White House is reporting as George Bush's "book count" for this year. Karl Rove trails him by ten books, with a total of 50.

As a past-parent of elementary school kids, I know what this is all about. Only one thing brings out a lofty book count from average students such as Bush, and that's a read-a-thon!

If you've got children, (or participated in a read-a-thon as a youth) you know what I'm talking about. Students get an empty tally sheet, with the instructions to read and list as many books as possible, to earn prizes, recognition and, of course, literary knowledge. When the contest begins, everybody has lofty goals of tearing through the Chronicles of Narnia, finishing each Harry Potter book, reading all the interesting Goosebumps books, reading books by Beverly Cleary, etc... Well, as the end of the read-a-thon approaches, most students look at their list and see a total of two, maybe three books on it. Sure, the kid was able to finish "Jurassic Park" but the final tally sits pretty low, right?

That's when most kids start padding the list with paperback pamphlets, comic books, and instruction guides to videogames.

But some kids were doing this all along. Every Monday, they turned in a long set of books supposedly read over the weekend, even though you know they that had spent the entire weekend at Disneyworld, since they are also bragging about a collectible pin they bought. Their book lists grew with leaps and bounds, like clockwork, every Monday. "Mrs. Johnston, Look! I've read all seven Narnia books this weekend! ...and they were GOOD!" Connivers from the start, they end up with the Read-a-thon Champ medal, because who can really question a tally so carefully crafted over several weeks? It would be like raising a red flag and asking, “How in the world did you manage to read eight books a month, every month, for the past year?”

Brains like that are undoubtedly borne for great things, such as the Presidency.