Check Obama’s summer reading list, drama included

As President Barack Obama begins his controversial vacation, as the U.S. economy slips further into recession, the President seems to be in search of "drama, passion and intrigue — at least in his reading material," the AP reported.

See GlobalPost: Week on Wall Street ends, thankfully

The White House says Obama bought two books at a Martha's Vineyard shop on Friday and brought three others from Washington for his 10-day stay.

One new book is "The Bayou Trilogy," a collection of crime novels by Daniel Woodrell set in Louisiana swampland. The other is "Rodin's Debutante" by Ward Just, a coming-of-age novel set in mid-20th- Century Chicago.

He arrived on the Vineyard with Abraham Verghese's "Cutting for Stone," a novel about Ethiopian twins who journey to America; David Grossman's "To the End of the Land," a turbulent family drama set in Israel; and "The Warmth of Other Suns," an epic about America's great migration by Isabel Wilkerson. One wonders with supposed daily briefings on the economy while on vacation, when he will read these novels.

But the President, author of two books of his own, is considered a voracious reader and also loves magazines and TV.

Senior adviser David Axelrod told the Washington Post that Obama reads "magazines like crazy," including the New Yorker, the Economist, Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone.

As for TV, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett says while he will watch press secretary Robert Gibbs' briefings, the president's television consumption revolves primarily around one network: ESPN.