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The important point to be made here is that Mitt Romney is a voracious reader of books and novels of all descriptions. There have been so many on his reading list, that whatever favorite he recalls first may pop out to answer an interviewer's question quickly. Romney has a guilty pleasure in reading some science fiction and some of his other favorites are Ann McCaffrey’s Dragon Flight, and Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.

Romney has said his favorite novel of any genre is probably Huckleberry Finn and he has read all of Louis L’Amour’s westerns.

Mitt Romney is thought to be the best read among the candidates about the threat of the Jihadist. Romney’s reading list includes the following books among others on the topic:

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us by Steven Emerson
Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America by Walid Phares
America Alone by Mark Steyn
Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor
The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer

Talk radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewed professor of military history and noted author Victor Davis Hanson who observed Mitt Romney's ability to discuss Middle East foreign policy at length with experts at the Hoover Institution:

Hugh Hewitt: What I like is that he’s a voracious reader, not only your books, but things like The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, Mark Steyn’s America Alone. I think this is pretty rare these days, to find curiosity at that level, and at that sort of voracious appetite for information. What do you talk about with him?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, we talk about history just like you and I talk about. We talk about foreign policy, he talked about the plan or the effort to democratize the Middle East, the shortfalls, the problems, the liabilities, and you know what? He came to the Hoover Institution and got in front of 40 senior fellows. And in that room there were Nobel Prize winners, a lot of egos, too. And he held court with them, and there were a lot of hostile questions, and he went for an hour and a half, head to head, with these people. When he walked out of that room, I think everybody was impressed with him. He didn’t pull any punches, and he could argue and was as logical as any Hoover fellow, and I was more impressed with him than I was with my colleagues.
^{(The Hugh Hewitt Show, March 13, 2007)}