What the Senator Reads

I saw over on Lindsay's blog where she listed the books she had read that are also on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books of 1990-2000. Lindsay has read 29 of them. Pretty impressive. So I gave the full list to the Senator and asked him to identify which ones he had read.

Here is the Senator's list:

13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
55. Cujo by Stephen King
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King

So the Senator has read 10 of them (an eleventh, Brave New World, is on the Senator's night stand but he's only gotten through the first couple of chapters).

I remarked to the Senator that his list was long on Stephen King and short on classics like Mark Twain. Moreover, I was especially surprised to see #72, Women on Top on his list. Why had the Senator read this?

The Senator just gave me one of those looks and asked if I didn't have a hearing to attend or a constituent letter to write.