Barack Obama, former President of the United States, was interviewed by The New York Times right before he was out of office. He mentioned that during his eight years in the White House he barely got five hours of sleep a night, but he insisted to read for an hour before he went to bed.  It’s no news to anyone that Obama is an avid reader. During the holiday season the books he bought and recommended were in the limelight. One of the most heart-warming highlights was he gave his 18-year-old daughter Malia a Kindle filled with books he wanted to share with her. They include: Latin American Magic Realist  writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing’s Feminist novel The Golden Notebook, American social activist Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, and Chinese American female author Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior. The reading list is not only a proof of a father’s love. It’s also an expectation from a father that a daughter should become an empowered, confident woman when she grows up.

You are what you read. Reading is not something difficult to do, and there is no right or wrong when it comes to reading. It’s purely a personal habit and choice. Although what books you read and how many books you read are totally private matters and preferences, the reading lists of people who can make significant impact to the society, like a president or an entrepreneur, can be the centre of attention in the public sphere. From their reading lists (and of course, such lists are publicity stunts to help project their views), we get to know more about these public figures who usually tend to keep their distance. To a certain extent, publicising their reading lists can be seen as part of their social responsibilities.

It is said that George W. Bush, former president of the United States, is a voracious reader (he read 40 to 100 books a year), although he was often teased by the media as a “cowboy”. Moreover, many millionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg are book lovers and they proactively promote a reading culture. Their reading lists are very often an important reference to most of us. On the contrary, Donald Trump, the new yet controversial president of the United States, has no appetite for reading books, according to Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter and credited co-author of his autobiography Trump: The Art of the Deal. Schwartz told The New Yorker that he never saw a book on Trump’s desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment. He noticed that he never talked about books and doubted that Trump has ever read a book in his life. I am also pondering whether Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-free trade policies, as well as his isolationist ideology are related to his apparent lack of interest in reading.

However, as I mentioned earlier, those reading lists are useful references but at the same time they are also publicity stunts. We should have our own stands and views regarding their reading preferences. I once have seen a comic that depicts three persons standing on three heaps of books with different heights and the view they see are very different. I think this comic is similar to the three stages of life in the Chinese philosophy: from the stage of “a mountain is a mountain, no matter how long you eye it. And water is water, no matter how hard you watch it” to the stage of “a mountain is no longer a mountain even you keep looking at it, and water is no longer water even you keep staring at it” and then to the final stage of “a mountain is still a mountain, water is still water”. It is through extensive reading that we can enrich our life and get to discover the truth, kindness and beauty amid the uncertain and bewildered world. A mature civil society and its members would not blindly follow what politicians or celebrities read. Their reading lists are just a reference and we should make our own judgment reading what to read.