In this article we will find a writer’s preferences regarding books. Mainly, we will enter the literary universe of John Paul Stevens. He was the Supreme Court justice and now we can talk about him as the author of two successful books: Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir and Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution. As a first statement, John Paul Stevens wants everybody to know that he is extremely grateful to Norman Maclean, the one who introduce him to poetry at the University of Chicago.
Because everybody wants to know what John Paul Stevens is currently reading, here is the answer: The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
His favorite novelist of all times is the Russian writer Lev Tolstoy. As about contemporary writers, John Paul Stevens stated that he likes the texts of Edward Rutherfurd and Ruth Rendell.
If you are interested in the law field and you want to know more about this system, John Paul Stevens recommends that you should start with the book The American Legal System and Civic Engagement, written by Ken Manaster. Now, if you are a law student, you may read something more advanced like Judge and Jury by Leon Green. Also, you should consult the texts of the ones considered by John Paul Stevens to be the best ones in the field: Stephen Breyer and Richard Posner.
In his spare time, John Paul Stevens likes to read about something else than law. Mainly, he is preoccupied with the texts debating the authorship of the plays believed to be written by William Shakespeare. Additionally, he keeps in his library other two “foreign” volumes: The Bible edited by King James and Georges Simenon’s mysteries.
As he cannot remember the last book that made him cry, John Paul Stevens states that the text that made him laugh was Dave Barry’s report on last year’s news events. He also has a book in his memory that made him feel angry and this is Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America written by Gilbert King.
John Paul Stevens’ parents used to love literature. As a consequence, they wished for their children to read as much as possible. This is how, as a child, he ended up having his own favorite books. Among them there were Winnie-the-Pooh; Little Men and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott; Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson; Count Felix von Luckner’s account of his raids on Allied shipping during the First World War; and a lot of books about Tom Swift’s adventures.
Later on, as a student, John Paul Stevens admits to have been most influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics. Now, he has two authors that he considers them to be his personal literary heroes: the one who really wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare, and A. Conan Doyle.
As a writer, John Paul Stevens cannot tell which novels have influenced him in his writing style and passion. But he knows for sure that has to be grateful to his poetry professor from the University of Chicago, Norman Maclean.
There is one single book he would recommend the president of the United State to read – Six Amendments.
Here is a funny and imaginary situation: if John Paul Stevens could invite three writers at his party he would choose Samuel Clemens, Charles Dickens and the author who wrote the entire texts attributed now to Shakespeare. The imagination exercise continues, as he has a spare list of writers, just in case the first three are to decline his invitation. These are: Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet.
Now, John Paul Stevens provides us with quick answers about the following book elections: he chooses history volumes to read before going to bed; Supreme Court opinions for travelling situations; but he offers no title for the worst book he has ever read.
As a writer he states that he feels embarrassed not to have read Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, and that he plans to read reviews for Six Amendments in the near future.
