AkooBooks Audio: Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2019 Part 1

We Live in Water

Stories

By: Jess Walter
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini & Jess Walter
Length: 4 hours 52 minutes

ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019
From the New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, the first collection of short fiction from Jess Walter—a suite of diverse and searching stories about personal struggle and diminished dreams, all of them marked by the wry wit, keen eye, and generosity of spirit that has made him... Read more

The Orphan Master's Son

A Novel

By: Adam Johnson
Narrated by: Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, James Kyson Lee & Adam Johnson
Length: 19 hours 18 minutes

“The Orphan Master’s Son tells a captivating, humorous, and heartbreaking tale of life in the reclusive Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Set to themes of propaganda and identity, we follow the story of Pak Jun Do, an orphan whose journey takes him from fighting in tunnels for the North Korean army, to a seafaring kidnapper, to a spy in... Read more

Trick Mirror

Reflections on Self-Delusion

By: Jia Tolentino
Narrated by: Jia Tolentino
Length: 9 hours 45 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire

Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia... Read more

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

Native America from 1890 to the Present

By: David Treuer
Narrated by: Tanis Parenteau
Length: 17 hours 44 minutes

“Framed as a counternarrative to Dee Brown’s famous Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, David Treuer’s book sets out to dispel a common myth that indigenous civilization effectively ended in 1890, when more than 300 Lakota men, women, and children were massacred by the U.S. Army. Treuer engages with the transformation and ongoing rebirth of Native... Read more

Furious Hours

Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

By: Casey Cep
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 11 hours 15 minutes

“In Cold Blood and To Kill a Mockingbird kept me up reading all night as a teen, and I can now add Furious Hours to the list of couldn’t-put-it-down tomes. I was enthralled, educated, and awestruck by Casey Cep’s well-researched and masterfully written true-crime account of a rural minister, his lawyer, and his killer. Thankfully, Cep discovered... Read more

The Topeka School

A Novel

By: Ben Lerner
Narrated by: Nancy Linari, Peter Berkrot & Tristan Wright
Length: 10 hours 34 minutes

“It’s the late ’90s in Topeka, and high school senior Adam Gordon is partying, going to school, and preparing for a national speech and debate competition—living a life he expects to reflect back upon with irony and detachment in some urbane, imaginary future. Lerner shifts between perspectives, stealing stylistic bits from autofiction and... Read more

Trust Exercise

A Novel

By: Susan Choi
Narrated by: Adina Verson, Jennifer Lim & Suehyla El-Attar
Length: 9 hours 57 minutes

“Set inside the acting program of an elite high school, Choi’s novel seems to consider every major preoccupation of our moment — class, gender, sexuality, race, power, predation, authenticity, ‘genius’ — with language that’s both uproarious and frothing with vital rage. To describe the plot in any detail, though, would reveal too much of Trust... Read more

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

By: Shoshana Zuboff
Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella
Length: 24 hours 16 minutes

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior.

The heady optimism of the Internet’s early days has turned dark. Surveillance capitalism has deepened inequality,... Read more

How to Do Nothing

Resisting the Attention Economy

By: Jenny Odell
Narrated by: Rebecca Gibel
Length: 8 hours 10 minutes

“This book is not a social media detox - it's way weirder than that! Through examples of cool ass performance art, bioregionalism, radical utopian and labor history, and more, artist Jenny Odell busts up the narrow confines of what we value as worth our attention when our attention is for sale and blazes a way back toward repossessing one of our... Read more

Lot

Stories

By: Bryan Washington
Narrated by: Bryan Washington, Dion Graham, JD Jackson & Bahni Turpin
Length: 5 hours 41 minutes

“This is such a phenomenal book by a writer who should be on everyone’s radar for 2019. Washington has a detailed and poignant style that reveals the tender soul within all of his characters. None of the characters that we meet in Lot are strangers — they are our mothers, brothers, lovers, and friends. Washington pulls them all together through... Read more

Lost Children Archive

A novel

By: Valeria Luiselli
Narrated by: Valeria Luiselli, Kivlighan de Montebello, William DeMeritt & Maia Enrigue Luiselli
Length: 11 hours 16 minutes

“This is unlike any other book I've read lately. All four characters are so vivid in my mind that it feels like we were all in the Volvo together and maybe my cardboard box was in among theirs. Read more

Say Nothing

A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

By: Patrick Radden Keefe
Narrated by: Matthew Blaney
Length: 14 hours 40 minutes

“This book is as good as everyone says. I knew I didn't know a ton about the troubles in Northern Ireland, but I didn't know HOW much I didn't know. This book turns a rather complex, sometimes dry (if you're not Irish or a war history person) subject into a story of intrigue, weaving the conflict's history with the stories of a few men and women... Read more

Normal People

A Novel

By: Sally Rooney
Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
Length: 7 hours 34 minutes

“What a treat to discover Sally Rooney! This novel stands out shining from the current onslaught of mediocre prose and less-than-suspenseful thriller plots. Normal People is the story of a relationship between two high school classmates in a small town in Ireland, and how it changes over time, through their last year of college in Dublin.... Read more

The Sixth Man

A Memoir

By: Andre Iguodala & Carvell Wallace
Narrated by: Sullivan Jones & Andre Iguodala
Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

**The Instant National Bestseller**

The standout memoir from NBA powerhouse Andre Iguodala, the indomitable sixth man of the Golden State Warriors.

Fresh off the Warriors’ fourth Finals win in eight years, Andre Iguodala long has been one of the most admired players in the NBA.

Off the court, Iguodala has earned respect, too—for his successful tech... Read more