President Obama's Reading List -- the second

December

1. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
3. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
4. The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
5. Courage is Contagious And Other Reasons to Be Grateful for Michelle Obama by Nick Haramis

November--Informative Reads
1. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, Thomas L Friedman
2. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Steve Coll
3. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels
4. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert A. Caro

And anytime, any month
By President Obama
1. Dreams from My Father
3. The Audacity of Hope
3. Of Thee I Sing a truly beautiful children's book

By Michelle Obama
1. American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America
2. Michelle Obama: In Her Own Words
3. We Rise: Speeches by Inspirational Black Women by Michelle Obama, Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Rosa Parks
4. Michelle Obama: Speeches on Life, Love, and American Values by Michelle Obama, Stacie Vander Pol (Editor)
5. Michelle Obama: Our First Lady

And here are some other links:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/books/president-obamas-reading-list.html

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/president-obama-reading-list/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/obamas-secret-to-surviving-the-white-ho...

February--Non-Fiction Titles
1. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos
2. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
3. Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr
4. A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers
5. The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria
6. Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein
7. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
8. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
9. Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American, Richard S Tedlow
10. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo

March--Obama's All-time Favorites
1. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
2. Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison
4. Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch
5. Gilead, Marylinne Robinson
6. Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam
7. The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton
8. Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
9. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
10. The Quiet American, Graham Greene
11. Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
12. Gandhi’s autobiography
13. Working, Studs Terkel
14. Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
15. Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith
16. All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren

April--Excellent Novels and Poetry collections
(Coinciding with Mark's Poetry Month)
1. Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
2. To the End of the Land, David Grossman
3. Purity, Jonathan Franzen
4. A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipau
5. Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
6. Lush Life, Richard Price
7. Netherland, Joseph O’Neill
8. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Salman Rushdie
9. Redeployment, Phil Klay
10. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
11. Plainsong, Kent Haruf
12. The Way Home, George Pelecanos
13. What Is the What, Dave Eggers
14. Philosophy & Literature, Peter S Thompson
15. Collected Poems, Derek Walcott
16. In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck
17. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
18. The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
19. Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

May--Books About Other Presidents
1. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris
2. John Adams, David McCullough
3. Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Fred Kaplan
4. Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Jonathan Alte
5. FDR, Jean Edward Smith
6. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
7. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln

June--Summer Reads 2016
1. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
2. H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
3. The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
4. Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
5. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

July--Summer Reads 2015
1. All That Is, James Salter
2. The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
3. The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri
4. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow
6. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

August--Independent Bookstore Purchases
1. Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
2. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
3. Nora Webster, Colm Toibin
4. The Laughing Monsters, Denis Johnson
5. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, Evan Osnos
6. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Dr. Atul Gawande
7. Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, Katherine Rundell
8. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
9. Redwall series, Brian Jacques
10. Junie B. Jones series, Barbara Park
11. Nuts To You, Lynn Rae Perkins

September--Childhood Classics
(Back to School Dontcha Know!)
1. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
2. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
3. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

October--Additional Authors and Philosophers
1. Langston Hughes
2. Richard Wright
3. Mark Twain
4. Malcolm X
5. Philip Roth
6. Saul Bellow
7. Junot Díaz
8. Dave Eggers
9. Zadie Smith
10. Barbara Kingsolver
11. St. Augustine
12. Friedrich Nietzsche
13. Jean-Paul Sartre
14. Thomas Jefferson
15. Ralph Waldo Emerson
16. Abraham Lincoln
17. Paul Tillich
18. E.L. Doctorow

November--Informative Reads
1. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, Thomas L Friedman
2. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Steve Coll
3. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels
4. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert A. Caro

December--Books for Daughters
(Because this is my daughter's birthday month)
1. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
3. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
4. The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston

What book are you going to read??

Here's my Obama update for the year.

February -- Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo ✔ ✔
March -- Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson ✔ ✔
April -- Harry Potter And the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling ✔ ✔
May -- Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama ✔ ✔
June -- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead ✔ ✔
July -- The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert -- reading
August -- Being Mortal Dr. Atul Gawande ✔ ✔
September -- Where the Wild Things Are and Junie B. Jones ✔ ✔
October -- The Best of McSweeneys edited by Dave Eggers -- reading

November -- I am thinking Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, Thomas L Friedman or I might just read the two I am still trying to finish. We'll see.

Then for December, I am inclined to read The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston, because I have no desire to read The Naked and the Dead, even though it is supposed to be great, and I have read the other two nominees.

My list:

Feb The Post-American World ****
March The Power and the Glory **1/2
April Behind the beautiful forevers ****
May What is the What? ****
- Sapiens ***
June Plainsong ***1/2
July The Sixth Extinction 'Scary'
August Being Mortal *****
September Where the Wild Things Are
October The Underground Railroad ***1/2

I still need to reread
Gandhi's Autobiography. I'll be going to Erdberg soon, so I'll borrow
Of Thee I sing **** Which finishes the year.

While I'm at it, I just gave up on Homo Deus. I read Sapiens in May (https://www.librarything.com/topic/250137#6037489) and the 'sequel', being a future history is just opinion.

I've definitely falling off the wagon on this challenge but The Power Broker has been on my TBR list for forever.

ETA: Eeek, but at 1,344 pages, probably not in November.

>9 MarthaJeanne: Nice!! And I think I will skip Homo Deus then...

>10 lindapanzo: I am not sure 1,344 pages is ever going to be for me!! LOL. Maybe something a tad smaller?

>11 Berly: I was just reading a series of sports essays and one involved Walter O'Malley moving the Dodgers from Brroklyn to LA. Robert Moses, of course, figured prominently and it was very interesting.

Definitely makes me want to read the Robert Moses book. Too bad it's not on Kindle. If it were, I could read it from time to time. I'm less likely to do that with a real print book. Still, I do have my ebook settlement burning a hole in my pocket...

>12 lindapanzo: I think you might have to...just saying!

After reading Being Mortal, I went on to read Checklist Manifesto, which is also excellent.

>14 MarthaJeanne: I have not heard of that one...thanks!

>14 MarthaJeanne: - I have read both those books by Gawande, as well as one other by him (I am blanking at the moment on the title). He is a powerful writer

He uses examples from many industries - airlines, banking, ... and of course, medicine to show how effective good checklists can be. I liked the WHO examples, but then my youngest son spent many an afternoon in a WHO office doing homework with his friend before the father drove him home.

It's almost time for December!! Here is the list:

December
1. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
3. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
4. The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston

And a new one brought to my attention by jessibud

5. Courage is Contagious And Other Reasons to Be Grateful for Michelle Obama by Nick Haramis

Kim, just FYI, your link in >2 Berly: to Of Thee I Sing by Obama, leads to a different book.

>19 jessibud2: Fixed. Thanks! There are probably others....I must admit to not checking them all. Bad girl.

I have decided on The Golden Notebook, having read #2 and #4 and having no real desire to read The Naked and the Dead.

You will be very pleased to know that I am hopeless. I keep promising myself not to buy any more books, and especially, no more hardcovers. But today, I proved myself nothing if not consistent in managing to break my promises. Yet again. I was in the bookstore (first mistake) looking to buy myself a small present. Special occasion, that was my justification (read: excuse). I browsed for a bit, of course, but then, I found one I had not seen before and into my hands it went, not to come out until I got to the cash register. Yes, it's a small one. But it's hardcover. Oh well.

Courage is Contagious And Other Reasons to Be Grateful for Michelle Obama. Testimonials from several names I know (Gloria Steinem, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alice Waters, Gabourey Sidibe) and plenty I don't. Foreword by Lena Dunham. I simply could not resist.

So, add it to your list, up there, will ya'?

>21 jessibud2: I am so pleased to know that you are hopeless! LOL. And I hope that this thread contributed to your demise in some small way. : )

I have duly added it to December's books.

I just got word that my November book is waiting at the library for me.

I've now picked up Of thee I Sing

and have borrowed the ebook of Rising Star, which of course is not on the list, but seems related to me. Whoops! Just saw how long this is. I think I'll just return it.

Easy come, easy go!! LOL. ; )

This just in! I just this minute printed out my ticket for this documentary, opening Jan. 19:

The Final Year - Barack Obama

I think it's opening in theatres and iTunes, as well.

I just read my November book. Of thee I sing Cute!

I just finished my October read The Sixth Extinction! Well written and oh so sobering.

We rock!

>26 jessibud2: oooo I shall look forward to that when it opens in the UK.

Courage is Contagious and other Reasons to be Grateful for Michelle Obama, edited by Nick Haramis.

This is a quick read, with 19 short essays by a wide variety of people telling how Michelle Obama came onto their radar and more specifically, the impact she had on them. Some essays were stronger than others, which isn't a surprise. From Lena Dunham, to Gloria Steinem, Alice Waters, Patton Oswalt, Jason Wu, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Tracee Ellis Ross and two 9th graders, as well.

A lovely, perhaps overlooked, detail are the sketches that open each piece. It was only when I looked at them one after the other, apart from the essays , did I realize that it was a progression, almost like those old-fashioned flip-books. The theme of them is a garden, from empty earth to seed to full fruition and full cycle. Like Michelle's organic garden. They are black and white ink (or maybe charcoal?) sketches. Just beautiful.

I did mark quite a few passages but the one I will include here is from Alice Waters, because she speaks of the garden and sums up the book well, in my opinion:

"The food from the garden became a metaphor for the values of the First Couple, from welcoming guests to helping neighbors in need. Her vision extended well beyond the boundaries of the White House plot.... Michelle Obama's White House garden was so much more important than I could have imagined. It was a living, growing representation of the bounty and generosity and diversity of the United States - and of her own large-hearted, far-seeing vision for the future of food in this country."

And because the book was compiled and published this year, a few of the essayists did mention the current administration and some comparisons were made, but they were brief, and did not darken the book, in my opinion. It remains a solid tribute to a woman who stands head and shoulders above the current admin and yet, remains firmly *of the people*.

>30 jessibud2: Very nice review. I saw this on your thread, so you can't book bullet me twice!! LOL Michelle is an amazing person. I want her to run for President!!

I still have about 100 pages of Gandhi's Autobiography left. I am not really enjoying it, but hope to finish it this year.

>32 MarthaJeanne: That's too bad. : ( Hope you can check it off your list!

To everyone who participated in the Obama Challenge this year--thanks for keeping me company and for sharing your thoughts and impressions of his favorite books! I certainly read some interesting ones, which is the point of the whole thing. : )

Here's What I Read
February -- Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo 4.0
March -- Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson 4.0
April -- Harry Potter And the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling 5.0
May -- Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama 3.5
June -- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead 3.5
July -- The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert 4.5
August -- Being Mortal Dr. Atul Gawande 4.25
September -- Where the Wild Things Are and Junie B. Jones 4.5 and 3.0
October -- The Best of McSweeneys edited by Dave Eggers -- halfway

I kinda fell off the band wagon the end of this year, but my favorites would have to be The Sixth Extinction and good old HP. And I am enjoying McSweeneys a lot.

Wishing you all enough time to finish those last reads and a Happy New Year!!

My list is up at >9 MarthaJeanne:. I wasn't that impressed by the fiction. But that's me. In fiction I value entertainment and good writing above social significance and artistic value. The nonfiction was usually better. Being Mortal was the best find.

>35 MarthaJeanne: Being Mortal was my second NF favorite and lost out just by a hair. Your comment about what you value in Fiction is spot on for me particularly as I approach this year's reading. I have been sucked into far too many books that I frankly just don't really enjoy. I want more fun this year! I am starting the year off with several Science Fictions, a genre I have neglected over the last few years.

I have now added my star ratings above.

Sixth Extinction didn't get star ratings from me, but in my comments on the previous thread I keep saying 'scary'.

I think you are younger than I am. My boys have been out of the house for years now. They have to worry about their own futures; I am no longer responsible for them. On the other hand, I am faced with trying to get the care I want from doctors who don't see that quality of life NOW means a lot more to me than added years of pain and side effects.

It's been great reading with you this year.

Added my stars, too. Pretty similar ratings I'd say! I only have one out of the house so far. Second one in community college living at home and the third is a high school senior.

I am dealing with Being Mortal second-hand as I try to help both set of parents make decisions and navigate where to live, how, and getting the medical care they need. I totally get the difficulty of NOW vs later. I wish you lots of luck and fortitude as you deal with this. It is not easy.

I have truly appreciate all of your book enthusiasm and insights. Hope I bump into you again on new reads. I have found your 2018 threads. : )

Except that I read Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone with my youngest son as he was learning to read. I even went to the movie with him. That was enough Harry Potter to last the rest of my life. That was before LT, but I suspect that I would have given it at best a 2.5. EXCEPT that he went on to read the others as they came out, and was otherwise at that time reluctant to read anything harder than the easy readers. So I owe JK Rowling a lot for convincing him to be a reader.

Ha! Well the fact that Rowling turned him into a read should at least merit a 3.0, right? ; )

OK, I finished An autobiography, or, The story of my experiments with truth, and was rewarded with chapers 39 - 41 being a lovely essay on Khadi cloth. I know khadi from my childhood in India, and I spin and weave myself, so this made my day. See my review for the rest of my opinion.

(It may not have been worth the whole read, but at least made me glad I persisted.)