Celebrities can Read Books

Ok, so I know that your first thought, looking at the title of this post, is to scoff sarcastically. Well good for you, scoffing is an important skill, and doing it sarcastically takes effort. However, I am serious. There are celebrities out there who can read, some of them even choose to do so.

I come to you with proof of this. The website Poll the People has started up the ambitious attempt to create an unscientifically produced polled series of international lists about books, albums, and movies (or as they call them, films). This part is boring, go ahead and be bored by it.

Are you done? Good, cause there's actually something interesting too. It could get more interesting if people outside of England join them.

Poll the People is encouraging celebrities to contribute top 5 lists. Why are you excited by this, Matt? I hear you ask. After all, who cares what celebrities think, most of them aren't so bright, and in the States we best know them for saying dumb things around election time. This is true.

But hang on, you see the secret with celebrities, and I know I'm dropping a bomb on you here with this revelation, is that they are popular. It is highly likely that the Rolling Stones are more popular than literacy in America. So if they lend their fame to a support of literacy maybe more people will read. I know, I know, it's a fantasy, but it couldn't hurt.

The bad news is, the Rolling Stones are not, as far as I know at present, throwing their considerable weight behind the whole reading thing. Instead, right now we have a bunch of obscure British celebrities who have contributed their top five lists.

Among them is Nick Hornby, the author. We can rest assured he's not bringing anyone new to books. He did his share when people were told that that Cusack movie they liked was once a book.

Still, there's some hope. Tim Rice-Oxley, of the British band Keane, and Tom Simpson, of the band Snow Patrol, have both contributed lists. Now I will admit, I've barely heard of these bands, but if I've barely heard of them, they're probably pretty big. If their fans pick up any of the books they've listed, then we're in the black. So that's pretty cool. Now we just need A-Rod to announce that he loves to curl up in the dugout with his well-thumbed copy of Gormenghast and America will enter a reading frenzy.