Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Former President Barack Obama shared one of his “favorite parts of summer” on Sunday: The books he chose to read “when things slow down just a bit.”
“This summer I’ve been absorbed by new novels, revisited an old classic, and reaffirmed my faith in our ability to move forward together when we seek the truth. Here’s what I’ve been reading,” he wrote in a Facebook post.
At the top of the stack was Tara Westover’s acclaimed “Educated,” a memoir about a woman’s upbringing and departure from an Idaho survivalist family “while still showing great understanding and love for the world she leaves behind.”
From the author of “The English Patient,” Michael Ondaatje, Obama selected “Warlight.” He said the World War II novel is “a meditation on the lingering effects of war on family.”
vCard.red is a free platform for creating a mobile-friendly digital business cards. You can easily create a vCard and generate a QR code for it, allowing others to scan and save your contact details instantly.
The platform allows you to display contact information, social media links, services, and products all in one shareable link. Optional features include appointment scheduling, WhatsApp-based storefronts, media galleries, and custom design options.
Obama also selected a 1961 novel he said he reread: “A House for Mr. Biswas,” the first novel of the recently deceased Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul. Obama applauds the work as a “great novel about growing up in Trinidad and the challenge of post-colonial identity.”
“An American Marriage: A Novel” by Tayari Jones is fourth on the list, offering “a moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple,” according to Obama.
The 44th president concludes his list with “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling, a New York Times bestseller about rejecting inherent bias and rooting views in facts — perhaps the only overt nod to the current news cycle and a president whose attorney declared a half hour after this reading list was published that “truth isn’t truth.”
While reading lists were a common feature of the Obama presidency, President Donald Trump has not released a summer list of his own. Still, he repeatedly endorses books on his Twitter account that appear to paint him in a good light.
Many of Obama’s social media followers commented that they had added the books to their own reading lists this summer.
The most popular comment, however, suggested the list had made fans nostalgic for the Obama administration.
“That feeling when it’s been two years, but you’re still madly in love with your ex,” Meghan Bingaling wrote, garnering more than 10,000 hearts and likes.