Brazil’s Bolsonaro finds novel way to reduce 27-year sentence: reading books

Former president convicted for coup plot to take advantage of law that knocks four days off jail term for each book read

Jair Bolsonaro’s lawyers appear to have been reading up on the country’s penal code and have found a way to help their client reduce the 27-year prison sentence he received last year for plotting a coup: by reading books.

There is only one problem: the former far-right Brazilian president has never been known as a bibliophile. “Sorry, I don’t have time to read,” Bolsonaro once declared. “It’s been three years since I read a book.”