This fall, though, is different, very different than I remember in a very long time. Over the last several weeks, my colleagues on the publishing side of the business have been saying that business is way off. The more I’ve heard this, the more I’ve wondered why. When it gets cooler, people tend to be inside and read more, not less. Why not this year?

The answer actually is quite simple—and very disturbing (at least to me). We are all reading about and watching what is going on in our very own reality show: the U.S. presidential election. We are doing this virtually in every spare moment. There are very few days that go by without a major development and I, for one, am afraid that if I miss one, the wrong candidate will win. We cannot stop watching and listening and, as a result, we have no time or interest for anything else. It seems that this phenomenon is especially true of book buyers.

As I said, this is a disturbing phenomenon, but the good news is that it will soon come to an end—our election is only two weeks away (thank goodness!). Hopefully, after November 8th, readers will be back in book stores, the first woman president will have been elected and our lives will return to where they were when all of this began. We can only hope!

Regardless of who you vote for in November, you have a responsibility to yourself and your country to be as informed as possible. First off, get your facts straight. It’s bad enough that politicians lie and conceal their meaning behind half-truths, but allowing yourself to be lied to is worse. Consult nonpartisan fact checking organizations to verify any and all claims. FactCheck and PolitiFact are both great resources, but there are others.

Second, read books about politics. Know the players AND the game. Here is a list of some of my favorites, in no particular order:

• On Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Republic by Plato
• Dark Money by Jane Mayer
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
• The Fix by Jonathan Tepperman (just started but so far so good)
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
• The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• Two Treatises of Government by John Locke

Some of these are difficult reads, but they should give you an outstanding foundation on which to approach political discourse. (And yes, I realize some of the above aren’t strictly about politics, but they’re relevant and revealing reads nonetheless.)

So now I ask our readers: What did you think of the first debate? What are some of your favorite political books?

DGLM client Roy Peter Clark did this with Michelle Obama’s speech at the opening night of the DNC. Clark identifies eight lessons from the First Lady’s speech that writers of any kind can benefit from. Strategies like “Use first person, second person and third person to create specific effects” and “Express your best thought in a short sentence.” These are especially useful if you’re working on a piece of writing meant to prove a point or win someone’s allegiance…for example, a query letter!

So next time you tune into a political speech, pay attention to not just what the speaker says, but how they say it! Find some inspiration for your own work (just be careful you take inspiration only, no fair hacking the actual words of the poor hard-working caffeine-addicted speechwriters!). And don’t forget to VOTE!

What tip in Roy Peter Clark’s list do you find most useful? Let us know in the comments if you’ve seen anything else in the presidential conventions that you want to apply to your query letter!