How to read like Obama: 10 books beloved by the Bookworm-In-Chief
Last week, between delivering a farewell address and fretting for the future of mankind, President Barack Obama sat down with New York Times chief book critic Michiko Kakutani for an in-depth discussion on what reading has meant to him—as a boy, as a man and as a president. In short: a whole lot. Obama explained that books brought him comfort, companionship, wisdom, perspective and even the occasional escape from his grueling schedule. As America prepares to say goodbye to its Reader In Chief (safe to say the new guy isn't exactly a book worm), here is a list of Obama’s favourite reads.
Obama reading list
Before departing on a 16-day family getaway to Martha’s Vineyard, Obama shared his 2016 vacation reading list, which included this book-club fave, published in 2014 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2015, about three interweaving narratives during World War Two.
Prez says: Obama has said how much he values novels that show differing perspectives (“which I have to do for this job”). A book that explores the POVs of a French girl and a Nazi should do the trick.
What, you thought POTUS was a book snob? The “it” read of 2015, Paula Hawkins’s debut novel about what can happen when we get involved in other people’s relationships, was another presidential summer reading list selection.
Prez says: Obama hasn’t said what he thought of Hawkins’s can’t-put-it-down thriller (presumably because he respects spoilers), though he did tell the Times that the other girl-centric thriller, Gone Girl, “was a well-constructed, well-written book.”
Footage of the President reading this Maurice Sendak classic, first published in 1963, to children on the White House lawn shows that someone has a pretty impressive funny-voice game.
Prez says: Back when he was still the senator from Illinois, Obama expressed his love for Sendak’s story of boundless imagination, saying, “What continues to be one of my favourite books [is] Where The Wild Things Are. I love that book and my wife still thinks that I’m Max. That I’m getting into mischief all the time.”
Last week the President had lunch with five of his favourite contemporary authors — Colson Whitehead, Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, Barbara Kingsolver and Dave Eggers, whose 2006 fictional autobiography of a young Sudanese refugee coming to America as part of the Lost Boys of Sudan program gets the presidential seal of approval. (Angelina Jolie, who makes a cameo in the book, is also a fan.)
Prez says: According to a piece on Politico.com, Obama liked this book so much that he urged all of his White House aids to read it.
Like many of Obama’s book recos, Joseph O’Neill’s 2008 novel about a Dutchman living in New York right after 9/11 got a sales bump (40 percent) following the presidential endorsement.
Prez says: In an interview about his weathering of the 2008 financial crisis, a still-new-to-the-office Obama told a New York Times reporter that he was sick enough of reading briefings that he had started turning to novels like this one.
Obama has frequently cited Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel as one of his No. 1 reads, even giving the book and its author a shout-out during his Presidential Medal of Honour speech in 2012. The coming-of-age story about a young black man in Michigan in the mid-20th century is often credited with winning Morrison her Nobel Peace Prize for Literature.
Prez says: Obama said Song of Solomon is an example of how books can remind you that in hardship there is “not just pain, but there’s joy and glory and mystery.”
Obama became pen pals with author Marilynne Robinson after reading her 2005 Pulitzer Prize–winner, a fictional autobiography of a pastor contemplating faith and family while facing death.
Prez says: “I started reading her in Iowa, where Gilead [is]. And I loved her writing in part because I saw those people every day. And the interior life she was describing that connected them… with my grandparents.”
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman wrote this accessible science text about the two methods of human decision making. Based on decades of research, the conclusion is more or less that we put too much confidence in human judgment.
Prez says: This 2011 book appeared on a list of Obama book recommendations in the November issue of Wired magazine.
Fates and Furies
In an interview with People, the President named Lauren Groff’s bestseller — a dark take on modern matrimony — as his top read of 2015 (his favourite 2015 jam was Kendrick Lamar’s “How Much a Dollar Cost,” btw).
Prez says: In particular Obama praised “the structure,” which tells the same story from two points of view.
The Underground Railroad
Obama told the NYT that Colson Whitehead’s fantastical look at two slaves making an unlikely escape was his most recent read.
Prez says: “[It] a reminder of the ways in which the pain of slavery transmits itself across generations, not just in overt ways, but how it changes minds and hearts.”
The Light of the World
FLOTUS Bonus: The First Lady named the powerful memoir by American poet Elizabeth Alexander, who found herself at an existential crossroads following her husband’s sudden death, as her favourite book of 2015.
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