Barack Obama's Summer Reading List 2019

Maid

“This was an amazing book about her life and struggles. It was so much better being able to hear the author tell the story. I could feel the despair in her voice and it made the book so much more poignant.”

Tricia, Mostly Books

“Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question in an Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: as we enjoy the Internet’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?

Now, Carr...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR).

These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of... Read more »

In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years,...

Exhalation

“WOW. My first experience with Ted Chiang absolutely blew me out of the water. Each story left me with wide eyes and a racing mind, running to my husband to read a passage so we could both be knocked over with wonder. Exhalation filled me with so many questions about our collective past, present, and future, I’ll be coming back to this book again and again trying to find the answers.”

Kasey Kane, Country Bookshelf

Inland

“Inland is a beautifully narrated by voices that are rarely heard in a story of the American west. Lurie, an immigrant from the middle east, and Nora, a pioneer wife struggling to survive, are both haunted by ghosts of their past. The dry arid desert provides a perfect backdrop for the events, relationships and challenges these two characters face. Obrect writes with dialogue present and past creating an almost dreamlike atmosphere in some places of the novel and nightmarish realism in others. This novel lays bare the struggles, relationships, personalities and conflicts that provided the foundation of the wild untamed west. This novel was epic, expansive, and completely nourishing of spirit.”

Ellen, Avid Bookshop

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.

It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so... Read more »

American Spy

“Part literary fiction, part spy novel, punctuated by black American history, Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel crosses time periods and genres. This unflinching portrayal of a young black woman who becomes a Fed during the height of the Cold War is based on the true story of Thomas Sankara, known as “Africa’s Che Guevara.” Politics, illicit relationships, and family drama all converge in this tale of American history, disguised as a thriller, written like a memoir. Be brave. Be groundbreaking. Take risks. Live to see the consequences of your actions and to be bold another day.”

BrocheAroe, River Dog Book Co.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Including the story "Drive My Car”—now an Academy Award–nominated film—this collection from the internationally acclaimed author "examines what happens to characters without important women in their lives; it'll move you and confuse you and sometimes leave you with more questions than answers" (Barack Obama).

Across seven... Read more »

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. This spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is ... Read more »

The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

“Well written and informative book based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for over one hundred years. The novel is rich in detail and plot twists and has a surprise gut wrenching ending. ”

Mollie, HearthFire Books and Treats

Lab Girl

“This book has it all: nature, love, science, drama, heartbreak, joy, and plenty of dirt. Not since Cheryl Strayed's Wild have I read such a rich and compelling nonfiction narrative. Lab Girl is the story of Jahren's life in science, and her writing on the wonders of nature will renew your sense of awe. But more than that, it is an exploration of friendship, mental illness, parenthood, and the messiness of life. The only flaw -- these pages fly by too quickly, leaving you wondering what you could possibly read next that will be just as good.”

Pete Mulvihill, Green Apple Books