Best of Books: Favorite books of famous people

The Pinellas Park Public Library has asked famous people their favorite books. The list includes favorite books of Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Roger Ebert and Ralph Nader, and many more, along with comments from these people.

Dave Barry

- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Anything by Robert Benchley
- Anything by P.G. Wodehouse
- Any of the Pogo Books
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

William Bennett (American conservative politician and pundit)

- The Odyssey by Homer
- The Republic by Plato
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- MacBeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and King Lear by William Shakespeare
- The novels of Walker Percy

Judy Blume

- As a 10 year old -- The Betsy-Tacy Series by Maud Hart Lovelace
- As a teenager -- The novels of Thomas Hardy
- As a young wife, mother, and aspiring writer -- The novels of Joyce Carol Oates
- The novels of John Updike
- 20 years later -- Any book, fiction or non-fiction that stays with me, making me think, question, and remember

Bobby Bowden (coach with the most wins in NCAA Division I football history, head football Coach at Florida State University):

- Holy Bible
- D-Day by Stephen Ambrose
- The Civil War by Shelby Foote
- Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Alabama's Coach by Paul W. Bryant and John Underwood
- Just As I Am by Billy Graham

Jimmy Buffett (singer, songwriter, businessman, film producer):

- Following the Equator by Mark Twain
- Don't Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk
- Key West Reader: the Best of Key West's Writers, 1830-1990 edited by George Murphy
- Ninety-two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane

Jimmy Carter

- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee (The book tells vividly and beautifully about life during the depression when I was a child.)
- The Bible (...had the greatest impact on my life.)

Tom Clancy

- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (The first real adult book I ever read; it also started me off on science fiction.)
- The Struggle for Guadalcanal by S.E. Morison (This one began my love for history.)
- The Day of the Jackal by Freddy Forsyth (The best thriller of all time, it also redefined the genre.)
- Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie (Perhaps the best piece of political history I've yet to read.)
- Shogun by James Clavell (I've always been a sucker for a fine historical novel.)

Howard Dean

- All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (Great insight into the appropriate use of power in a democratic state. Good exploration "means to an end dilemma.")
- Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey (Really good writing about all of the human emotion.)
- The Day on Fire; a novel suggested by the life of Arthur Rimbaud by James Ramsey Ullman (Fictionalized biography of the French poet, Arthur Rimbaud. Good insight into what went on in French colonialism and into the absinthe based cafe society in the Left Bank of Paris.)

Roger Ebert

- The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
- The Golden Bowl by Henry James
- Victory by Joseph Conrad
- Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
- Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki

Edge (Adam Copeland) (World Wrestling Entertainment superstar):

- To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust
- Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
- Eragon by Christopher Paolini
- Omerta by Mario Puzo
- The Stand by Stephen King
- Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

John Edward (TV personality, psychic medium):

- Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Read in school and loved it!)
- Flowers in the Attic series by V.C. Andrews (They were free summer reading and my entire family read them and passed them around.)
- Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (Read it in school and loved it.)
- The Stand by Stephen King (Great story about good versus evil.)
- Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Great adventure that educates along the way.)

Bill Gates

- The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
- Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- My Years With General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Language Instinct by Steven Pinkler

Anne McCaffrey (Regarding her list of books, she stated: "Not, perhaps, any of them classics, with the exception of KIM, by books I enjoy rereading for the satisfation they give me."):

- Kim by Rudyard Kipling
- Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright
- Tigana by Guy Gabriel Kay
- The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer
- The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Ralph Nader

- Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy: A Book of History & Strategies edited by Dean Ritz
- The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception by David Corn
- "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
- The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It by Maria Angell, M.D.
- Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy by Lewis H. Lapham

Oliver North (Former Lt. Colonel, conservative commentator):

- The Bible
- The Book of Virtues by William Bennett
- The books of Winston Churchill

Ted Nugent (hard rock guitarist)

- Blood Trails: The Truth About Bowhunting by Ted Nugent
- Call of the Wild by Jack London
- Fred Bear's Field Notes by Fred Bear
- Trailing a Bear by Bob Munger

Howard Rheingold (writer of Virtual Reality, The Virtual Community, Tools for Thought and Smart Mobs among others)

- The Way of Life by Lao Tse
- The Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford
- Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
- Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

The Reverend V. Gene Robinson (Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire):
- From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman (Best single resource for understanding the intractable conflict in the Middle East, especially Isreal and Palestine. Anything by the NY Times columnist is great!)

- Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King (Behind the scenes story of how Michelangelo came to paint the Sistine Chapel. Fascinating and well written.)
- Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver (All of her novels are fabulous, especially Prodigal Summer, but this book of essays, mostly on ecology themes is a must read; the essay on biodiversity is brilliant!)
- Wrestling with God and Men by Steve Greenberg (Just when you think everthing has been said about the religious debate over homosexuality, this new book explores new territory, just published in 2004.)
- The Way of the Wolf by Martin Bell (Stories which cast the message of the Gospels in new images. There is an accompanying tape with Martin Bell dramatically reading some of them.)

David Rothman (Internet personality)

- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (Or perhaps Babbitt Lewis is passe now, but I can't get his characters out of my mind)
- What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg (Although it isn't great, we're talking favorites here)
- Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (This book made me--a Virginian--want to go to the University of North Carolina, and I did. And for good measure, I ended up years later with a Tar Heel wife.)
- All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (Primary Colors is lifeless compared to the book that inspired it.)

Buffy Saint-Marie (folk singer):

- Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World by Jack Weatherford
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
- The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
- The Grass Dancer by Susan Power
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Steven Spielberg

- The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fennimore Cooper (Including titles: The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prarie, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer.)
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

George M. Steinbrenner (principal owner of the NY Yankees):