Washington, Dec. 31 : In what without a doubt is the most astounding op-ed piece of the year, Karl Rove reveals that his friend and former boss, George W. Bush, has read probably hundreds of books over the course of his presidency.

In his column for the Wall Street Journal, Rove says that Bush read 95 books in 2006 alone. In 2007, he read 51 books and as of last week, he had read 40 in 2008.

According to the Washington Post, one of them was Albert Camus'' "The Stranger," with its unforgettable opening lines: "Mother died today. Or perhaps it was yesterday, I don''t know."

Bush''s choice of the Camus classic is odd on the face of it. It is a novel about estrangement, about an amoral, irreligious man (Meursault) who never shows emotion.

"In the 35 years I''ve known George W. Bush, he''s always had a book nearby," he writes.

"He plays up being a good ol'' boy from Midland, Texas, but he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don''t make it through either unless you are a reader."

As might be expected, most of Bush''s books have been biographies and histories.

Biographies are usually about great men who often did the unpopular thing and were later vindicated. As for histories, they are replete with cautionary tales.

Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics'' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt.
(ANI)