Monday, January 10, 2022

David Brooks’s books

[PBS NewsHour, January 8, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

I went back to Friday’s NewsHour for a screenshot, and I couldn’t resist choosing this one. “Look, Judy! Look, Jonathan! I am . . . a wild and crazy guy!”

I’ve never seen this Brooks background before — he’s usually at one end of a long living (?) room, with books at the other end. I was wondering if there might be a Garner’s Modern English Usage, third edition, among the blues. There isn’t.

But: can you spot the old Bartlett’s Quotations? The title isn’t readable, even with the larger view, but there’s definitely a Bartlett’s Quotations in there.

Related posts
A book on Judy Woodruff’s shelf : T.S. Eliot’s Complete Poems and Plays on Hardball

[“Wild and crazy”: because he has arranged books by color. I should have been explicit about that.]

comments: 7

Joe DiBiase said...

After a meeting with friends and an admissions officer from an Ivy League school in the Guidance Office at my high school, I was discouraged about how I could ever write a good essay for my college applications. All of the examples he gave involved a tragedy or some other extreme experience that I hadn't been "fortunate" enough to have gone through. The one example that I remember was by a student that recounted what it was like to carry his dead friend's body down a mountain after a climbing accident. Since I didn't think I could come up with anything as "good," I turned to Bartlett's Quotations and picked several quotations that I thought were thought-provoking, funny, and/or represented my thinking at the time. I prefaced my essay with something like, "Many that have come before me are far more thoughtful than I, so here are my favorite quotes ...." The preface was the only original writing in the entire essay. Over the years, I've wondered how that essay was received by the admissions officers that read it.

Michael Leddy said...

I think I’d have been agreeably amused.

Have you ever seen this one?

Chris said...

Brooks appears to organize his books, at least in part, by color.

Michael Leddy said...

Have you noticed that in his other remote setting too?

Michael Leddy said...

P.S.: That’s why I called him a wild and crazy guy. : )

Slywy said...

He was in my college class. Sigh.

Michael Leddy said...

Sigh is right. Any stories?