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Obama Book News, In Brief

Obama has been called everything from the second coming of Lincoln to the second coming of Christ. Now, thanks to 400,000 Japanese, he's being hailed as a second language teacher. Via NPR: A new book called The Speeches of Barack Obama tops the best-seller list on Amazon's Japanese Web site...The speeches are written in English with Japanese translations, and they're packaged with a CD...The publisher says speeches by U.S. presidents and presidential candidates are excellent for learning English.

American poet Jay Parini says Obama's inaugural address showed a master of "common speech heightened" at work. Or, to put it another way: Parini thinks our 44th president is a poet.

On the flip side, Carol Rumens found Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem to be 'way too prosey,' and says, 'it fell flat.' This, only a day after Alexander's publisher announced a 100,000 copy print run of Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration. Ouch.

Additional Links of Particular Note:

The NYTimes charts Obama's life by the books he's read: From Books, New President Found Voice
The Omnivorous Blog uses the above article to compile the most up-to-date list of books Obama's mentioned and/or been seen reading.
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