The 44th President of America was our first black president, a pioneer in his “pivot to Asia” and already missed by many. But to us at WORD he will primarily be our book bea, reader in chief, and the coolest lit lover to ever helm the nation.
As he looks to having leisure for the first time in years, our booksellers look at his reading recs from the past eight and revel in our overlap and new additions to our TBR piles.
Christopher, Bookseller/ Cafe
I would love to recommend my personal hero Junot Diaz, it came out recently that Obama read Junot during some difficult times in his presidency. I'd recommend the books Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to start with!
Lydia, Book Fair Coordinator
I would definitely recommend the book he wrote for his daughters: Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters. It's a beautiful picture book that is a tribute to 13 Americans that shaped our nation but is also about how he sees the traits those Americans had within his own children and all American children.
Steven, Inventory Coordinator
I love Denis Johnson. He's in my top 3 favorite writers. That's one of the authors that I was pretty surprised by and happy to see the president reading. The Laughing Monsters is on top of my to read list.
Brian, Events Coordinator
I'll be reading all of Phil Klay's Redeployment because the title story is one of my favorites and our military engagement is so hidden from the population in general... plus Klay is a literary hunk. [Note the bookseller’s of WORD do not take responsibility for Brian’s man crush, though they do encourage it]
Hannah, Operations Director
One of my top five books ever is Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk, a book I am currently gingerly rereading in the face of personal loss and the loss of our solid moral leader in our President. The fear between the hawk and Macdonald, and the peace they come to is incredibly detailed. Her dovetailed investigation into one of the unsung literary genius' of the World War II era is a wonderful tale of the dangers of secluding yourself and the saviors of nature. The fact that Obama enjoyed a beautifully crafted book so centered on empathy is one of the many things I love about him!
I'm also going to read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind because understanding our history as a grouped species seems deeply important at the moment.
Aubrey, Children’s Manager and Katelyn, Operations Supervisor:
We’re happy to see that Obama enjoyed Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, a super-addicting modern fairy tale, which features one of the most fascinating female characters I have ever encountered. This book is a beautiful meditation on love and marriage but also the personal struggle of womanhood in the public realm. I wonder if he saw all of the twists coming, or if the second half of the book left his jaw agape too.
Elizabeth Kolbert, a staff-writer for the New Yorker, is one of my go-to experts of the science and politics of global climate change. The Sixth Extinction is a book looks at the broad impact that humans have had on the world, specifically on the sharp decline in species diversity. This book is a must-read for readers who follow the work of E. O. Wilson, Bill McKibben, and George Monbiot.
Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon features a debate between characters Guitar in Freddie in Tommy's Barbershop over the real-life murder of Emmett Till. This scene stopped me in my tracks when I first read it in mid-2012, as protests around the country were mounting over the murder of Trayvon Martin. This book is a must-read to understand the times we're living in.
Where the Wild Things Are - This was a favorite for me as a child and re-reading it as an adult I've realized how many important things Sendak was portraying. This story teaches that things shouldn't be judged by their appearance and that it is okay and encouraged to have a great and wild imagination. I would recommend this for any age because sometimes as we get older we need those reminders.
Looking at Obama’s list I am gonna read One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel GarcĂa Márquez because I enjoy magical realism and literature that's representative of different cultures from different authors and this novel is supposed to be the mac daddy of those two features.
I’d also recommend a favorite classic of mine, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I feel we live in a time period where we're ONLY taught how to win and how to be winners so much so that when inevitable failure occurs, especially with our dreams, it's hard for us to both accept and process.
Ashanti, Inventory Director
As booksellers we get the lucky privilege of reading soon-to-be-published works sometimes months in advance of the publication date. The frustrating flip side of this is you can talk about it as much as you want, but you can't put in people's hands until it actually, y'know, publishes. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was one of those titles that as soon as I picked it up, I knew I had something special in my hands. So rarely does a book absolutely floor me with it's "twist" AND speak to existing in a female body in contemporary society. Flynn's notion of "the cool girl" has radically shaped how I interact with other people.
The best kind of armchair travel, Finnegan's biography Barbarian Days is so compelling that even if you've never thought of dropping everything else in life to go surf, you'll at least understand the allure. Not only do we get beautiful locales, we get a narrator sensitive to exoticism and othering, questioning what his interactions mean to the people with whom he visits. Besides that, the prose is lush and carries you through the counter-cultural spike of the 60's, 70's, 80's with aplomb.
A few Obama-recommended books dear to my heart belong to the still-developing African American literary tradition, and because they grapple so fearlessly with our American experiment they feel especially important now. Whenever someone in our community wants to read the electric, absurdist Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952) — a piece of the larger American cannon — I want to point them to Souls of Black Folk (W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903) to better understand Ellison's references, and after they've digested it I want them to follow up with the meditative coming-to-terms arrived at in The Fire Next Time (James Baldwin, 1963). Some of the most noteworthy contemporary authors in the tradition are still responding to these compasses.
Alison Gore, Operations Supervisor
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is a beautiful novel about three generations of a religious midwestern family and the various joys, griefs, and hurdles they face.
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
janainaart
discoholicmusic
jacobvanloon