That ought to be happy about the Clinton moving...

ONE GROUP that ought to be happy about the Clinton moving into the White House is booksellers.

News stories have described the president-elect's reading habits, which are voracious and varied. Throughout the campaign, he kept two books going at all times, one policy-oriented and one fiction. A Washington Post story on the subject noted that the Clintons like to socialize with their favorite authors and suggested that Baltimore's prize-winning historian Taylor Branch, an old friend, ought to "dust off his tuxedo."

The president-elect is not the only bookworm in the family. During her tour of the family's living quarters with Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton was reported to be far less interested in decorating possibilities than in trying to decide where the family will be able to install enough shelves to house their enormous collection of books.

Perhaps we can look for a new and welcome trend in home decor -- the cozy comfort of book-lined walls. The trend is possible, of course, only because bookshelves have all but disappeared from American homes. For our taste, nothing is more barren than a brand-new, million-dollar MacMansion, containing, at best, a small bookshelf in the kitchen to hold a few trendy cookbooks. We like our books by the wall-full, the more well-thumbed and dog-eared, the better.

Dare we hope? Perhaps with the Clintons in residence, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will be known as "The White House that Reads."