If Barack Obama reads like a college professor and Donald Trump reads like a pundit, Justin Trudeau reads like your teenage nephew.
In an April 3 Quora post, the Canadian prime minister said he was an avid reader, citing Stephen King and science fiction writers Neal Stephenson and Tad Williams as favorite authors.
He also noted that he’s part of the web comic xkcd fan club, of which philanthropist Bill Gates also counts himself a member.
The titles on his short list of favorites:
Fiction
La part de l’autre, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt (2003)
An alternative history by French-born playwright Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Schmitt imagines a world in which Adolf Hitler was admitted into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna for painting.
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline (2011)
A massively popular speculative fiction novel set in 2044, where most people choose to live in a virtual society. The novel follows Wade Watts in a hunt for a fortune hidden in the virtual world.
Non-fiction
Gardens of Democracy, Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer (2011)
Writer Eric Liu and entrepreneur Nick Hanauer argue for a new, nonpartisan definition of democracy and civic engagement.
Champlain’s Dream, David Hackett Fischer (2008)
A biography about French explorer Samuel de Champlain, by the Pulitzer-winning author of Washington’s Crossing. Before Fischer’s book, relatively little was known about the life of the influential navigator who helped settle Canada.