Everybody Read

I’m always dubious of reading programs that try to get an entire city or state to read one book. This week, Jeb Bush held a press conference to announce the book that all of Florida should read, The Zero Game by Brad Metzler. After comparing the book to the DaVinci Code, Bush made this pitch:

If you could only do one thing really well to be successful in life it is probably to be really literate because then you can acquire knowledge, be respective of where you are, who you are and with that comes all sorts of other things.

The apple doesn’t fall far from that other apple, eh? An A for effort, I suppose. It seems that these “One Book, [insert location here]” reading programs are doomed to fail. An example: read Bookslut’s hilarious summary of why some wingnuts in Galveston went apeshit when their “one book” was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – the most harmless book ever. These are people who were not being respective of themselves or where they are.