Okay, I know that I'm about 2 weeks late to this party, but I just have to add my 2 cents here. Mitt Romney recently said that his favorite novel was the L. Ron Hubbard classic, Battlefield Earth.
It's bad enough that a serious presidential candidate who belongs to a cult of crazy people is recommending a book written by someone who founded a cult of even crazier people. But there's the small problem that Battlefield Earth is an absolutely terrible book! I'm not proud of this fact, but I've read it. I bought it at a airport bookstore at the beginning of a multi-state, multi-school grad school visit trip in college. I figured "hey, I like sci-fi. And it's long-I have a lot of flights and train rides and bus rides coming up, so why not?" Then I started reading it.
It's like a 1000+ page car wreck-you can't look away, even though you know you're going to have nightmares. The writing is terrible, the story is ridiculous, it's as if it was written by someone who had a few very poorly-fleshed out ideas, started writing a book about it, realized that it sucked, and then said 'well, I've spent so much time on this crap, I might as well pound out something and see if I can sell it.'
It's not like I was going to vote for Romney anyway. He seems like a nice guy, but he's clearly an opportunistic political type, who will literally take whatever position seems best that morning to get himself elected. And I kind of doubt that John Edwards could engage me in a particularly thoughtful discussion about James Joyce. But shouldn't we have some minimal standards of cultural appreciation in our elected officials? Fine, you can watch Everybody Loves Raymond reruns if you must. But please, just throw me the bone of, when you are asked what your favorite novel is, pick something that has actually added positively to the sum total of goodness on the planet.
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