He, too, has been changed in his turn: Read Like Joe Biden

The world discovered late last night or early this morning that presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama picked Delaware senator Joe Biden as his vice-presidential candidate. I knew next to nothing about Biden before today, but for the record, Camus totally called this one last week.

So what does Joe Biden like to read? A cached version of his Facebook page gives us two of his favorite books last year: AMERICAN GOSPEL: GOD, THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND THE MAKING OF A NATION by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, and IRISH AMERICA: COMING INTO CLOVER by Maureen Dezell. If you would guess by these that Biden is religious and of Irish descent, you are correct. A site on the Iowa caucus adds John Grisham's THE RUNAWAY JURY to this list, which I remember as being slightly better than THE PELICAN BRIEF and THE RAINMAKER but not as memorable as THE FIRM.

Of course Biden has also written a book, and last year's PROMISES TO KEEP: ON LIFE AND POLITICS is probably disappearing from your local secondhand bookstore right this second. And according to the Huffington Post, he likes to quote Yeats' "Easter 1916" on the Senate floor (from which the title of this post was taken).