Barack Obama, President of the United States (2009-2016)
Barack Obama, despite the constant employment in the White house still managed to find time for reading books. Now, when he yielded the post Donald Trump free time he will be much more. And, according to Obama, he will spend it on his family and Yes — books!
READ. According to 55-year-old policy, he tries not to limit herself to any one genre — it is more important to make it interesting and instructive. Here are a few books he read recently: “Washington: a Life,” Ron Chernow, “All the invisible light” Anthony John (for this novel, the writer received the Pulitzer prize), “All that is” by James Salter, “the Sixth extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert and “the Lowland,” Lahiri Jumpy. While Obama enjoyed reading and classical music (sometimes simultaneously from several books): Mark TWAIN, Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville, Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
THE MAIN IMPRESSION OF OBAMA. One of the latest books that he was particularly hooked, the ex-President called the novel Fates and Furies (in a brilliant Ukrainian translation Olga Zakharova — “Dol Four”) writer Lauren groff. We have read the novel (he tells about the woman staying from time to time in the shadow of her husband), and the excitement share.
Just do not think that it is “easy reading”. This book is not read in the subway or on the go — it requires a more serious relationship. The novel at the same time hard and cruel: he plays cat and mouse with the reader, like the heroine with her husband. Each page is literally bleeding warning: “do Not trust each other”. Curiously, the novel does not suggest to read men — they say, with their fragile psyche after it easy to hate all women. Obama thought otherwise…
The spirit of the novel is close to “the Girl on the train” by Paul Hawkins and “the Casual vacancy” by JK Rowling.
QUOTE. “Then won namine threw the ball to Yom in oblichchya z with such force, that he fell, varisa head on the asphalt”.
Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of state (2009-2013)
According to Hillary, the novel of Dostoevsky “the Brothers Karamazov” she read in his youth. And even then, the novel has captivated her with his main message: “Unsafe conviction of a man that he only is right.” Especially Clinton advises to read the book to those who still live “with the cold war mentality”. Politician and loves the stories of Alice Munro.
QUOTE. “No, man is broad, even too broad. I’d narrowed”.
Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France (2007-2012)
The ex-President of France book lovers never were, until he did not take wife Carla Bruni, closely having been engaged in painting his image. Then Nicolas modestly admitted that Yes, he has a favorite book. It was a classic novel by Stendhal “Red and black”. That’s funny, the dislike of books does not prevent Sarkozy to be friends with the writer Michel Houellebecq.
QUOTE. “Politics is a stone around the neck of literature.”
Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine
In January of this year, Poroshenko called six books, which impressed him and which, in his opinion, worthy of attention. The list is named President of books — “Memories” Paul Skoropadsky “25 victories of Ukraine” Alexander paly, “the Templars” by Serhiy Zhadan, “Secondhand time” by Svetlana Alexievich, the anthology of Ukrainian poetry of the twentieth century and “Kazimir Malevich. The Kiev period 1928-1930” Tatiana Filyovskaya. The President particularly singled out the “Memories” of the former Hetman of Ukraine, who fled the country in 1918 and died in 1945 in Germany. In his book, Pavel Petrovich in great detail, how with the support of European allies tried to keep their Ukraine. The main disadvantage of the book — the text is too “dry”.
QUOTE. “Whatever it is, Ukraine in one form or another will be. Will not force the river to go back” (from “Memoirs”).
David Cameron, Prime Minister of great Britain (2005-2016)
The leader of the Conservative party and the 75th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (2005 and 2016) among his most favorite books confidently calls the memoirs of the poet, novelist and soldier Robert graves ‘ “Goodbye to all of this,” written in 1929.
The novel describes the childhood and adolescence of the writer and the bloody events of the First world war, which was to graves (at 18 he volunteered for the front, and the battle of the Somme, was badly wounded). Despite the fact that graves lived a long life (he died in 1985 at the age of 90 years), to the end he was tormented by dreams in which he again and again out of the trench and was in a bayonet charge. His book is war without embellishment: a gas attack, panic spy, swollen bodies of the dead, stupid orders polished officers, kilometer-long queues in the brothels and deadly iron monsters — tanks, which at that time nobody knew…interestingly, our open spaces memoirs were published only in literary magazines (and they are freely available on the Internet). So we know bad, unlike the other books of Robert: a historical novel “I, Claudius”, which was filmed in a series in 1976, directed by Herbert wise.
QUOTE. “For two days we stood near the forest Mamet. Field the form is not saved from the cold night air, and I went to the forest to collect German uniforms to hide them. There were a lot of dead and a huge Prussian guards and undersized soldiers from the Royal Welsh and South Welsh border regiments of the New army. In the woods there is not a single tree.”
Bill Clinton, U.S. President (1993-2001)
Once bill Clinton uttered that his Handbook is the novel “100 years of solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Marquez himself, learning of this, wrote with irony: “I Think he said so, just to get the votes of Hispanics.” However, after a personal meeting with Clinton, the Patriarch changed his mind: “looks Like he really loves this book.”
QUOTE. “Be calm. To die is harder than you think”.
Yuriy Lutsenko, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine
The main reading among our politicians. Being in prison, Lutsenko was saved by the fact that constantly read. The politician later admitted that the book helped him “to remain human”. Among the favorites — “the Diamond chariot” Akunin, “Shantaram” is Roberts, “12 hoops” Andrukhovych. Allocated Lutsenko and “Napoleon’s Buttons” by G. Verdi. Burreson.
QUOTE. “Some witches confessed before they began to torture him.”
