It’s officially silly season, when newspapers, mags, and web-hacks–not to mention group bloggers–have to make up all sorts of false controversy and harmless gibberish to fill up their pages. Here’s a good example of the latter.

The Sunday NYT, apparently inspired by the photograph of Obama holding a copy of Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, has asked various writers to recommend books to all three presidential candidates. The list will appear in print in this Sunday’s special NYT Summer Reading supplement.

It’s typical journo filler, but some suggestions are quite amusing, such as Garry Wills’s:

I commend, to each of the busy finalists of this year, an essay by Samuel Johnson.

For McCain: The Rambler No. 11, on anger in old age.

For Obama: The Rambler No. 196, on the illusions of young hope.

For Clinton: The Rambler No. 79, on demonizing one’s opponents.

The top prize, however, surely goes to Gore Vidal (who we know, thanks to Clark, has been reading Bill Kauffman):

I can only answer in the negative: I want them not to read The New York Times, while subscribing to The Financial Times.