I'm biased, but you're going to want to own this mock biography of Vice President Joe Biden today.

Finally! Read Like Sarah Palin

About two months ago I e-mailed the Republican presidential campaign on a lark. Late in August I wrote about what Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden liked to read, and I was hoping to do the same with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who was even less well known to me than Biden. (Much less; I believe my response to the announcement was an "Arrested Development"-style "Her?") Unlike Biden, Palin didn't have a Google-friendly answer, although I found evidence that at some point her Facebook page listed "favorite books."

I never heard back from official campaign brass, but I suppose they have many more important tasks than dealing with impertinent bloggers with no political influence. But I discovered today that Palin was saving the exclusive on what she likes to read for People Magazine, which is why she ducked Katie Couric's question about her favorite periodicals last month like so:

Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Here's the scoop from People:

SP: I'm a voracious reader, always have been. I appreciate a lot of information. I think that comes from growing up in a family of schoolteachers also where reading and seizing educational opportunities was top on my parents' agenda. That was instilled in me.

What do you like to read?
SP: Autobiographies, historical pieces – really anything and everything. Besides the kids and sports, reading is my favorite thing to do.

What are you reading now?
SP: I'm reading, heh-heh, a lot of briefing papers on a lot of issues that are in front of us in this campaign.

What about for fun?
SP: Do we consider The Looming Tower something that was just for fun? That's what I've been reading on the airplane. It's about 9/11. If I'm going to read something, for the most part, it's something beneficial.

Not for nothing, but I haven't read THE LOOMING TOWER. Maybe I should get on that.

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).