Obama's 2025 Fave List

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I miss having a president who reads books.

+1.

Obama’s annual best of lists are always great— I also love his music list. I’m sure he gets help but wow they’re good in highlighting both low and high brow, mass appeal and niche, etc.

yeah, it does achieve that, which kind of also undermines the list entirely.

Why?

Because it appears to be entirely "curated" in order to garner approval from naive people, such as yourself.

One of my favorite comedy interviews was when Hasan Minhaj questioned Obama on whether he really read the books on the list.

Nearly 10 years out of office, why does Obama need our approval, by the way? And, sadly, what small percentage of the population do you think has read any book on his list?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I miss having a president who reads books.

+1.

Obama’s annual best of lists are always great— I also love his music list. I’m sure he gets help but wow they’re good in highlighting both low and high brow, mass appeal and niche, etc.

yeah, it does achieve that, which kind of also undermines the list entirely.

Yeah, no. That’s how real people who actually read, read. I don’t sit on the beach with Faulkner, and neither do you.

Ha! Actually I do. I have a PhD in Literature and I'm a writer by profession, so we differ hugely. I also don't sit on beaches.

So she’s right. You don’t sit on the beach with Faulkner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I miss having a president who reads books.

+1.

Obama’s annual best of lists are always great— I also love his music list. I’m sure he gets help but wow they’re good in highlighting both low and high brow, mass appeal and niche, etc.

yeah, it does achieve that, which kind of also undermines the list entirely.

Yeah, no. That’s how real people who actually read, read. I don’t sit on the beach with Faulkner, and neither do you.

Ha! Actually I do. I have a PhD in Literature and I'm a writer by profession, so we differ hugely. I also don't sit on beaches.

So she’s right. You don’t sit on the beach with Faulkner.

That much is true. The man is very much dead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I miss having a president who reads books.

+1.

Obama’s annual best of lists are always great— I also love his music list. I’m sure he gets help but wow they’re good in highlighting both low and high brow, mass appeal and niche, etc.

yeah, it does achieve that, which kind of also undermines the list entirely.

Why?

Because it appears to be entirely "curated" in order to garner approval from naive people, such as yourself.

So? Every “best of” list is curated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I miss having a president who reads books.

+1.

Obama’s annual best of lists are always great— I also love his music list. I’m sure he gets help but wow they’re good in highlighting both low and high brow, mass appeal and niche, etc.

yeah, it does achieve that, which kind of also undermines the list entirely.

Why?

Because it appears to be entirely "curated" in order to garner approval from naive people, such as yourself.

So? Every “best of” list is curated.

Yes, and when the NYtimes does it, say the "best of 2025" list, you know it's based on books they have reviewed that year. Not one person, but a group of journalists and they vote on it. When Obama produces a list, it appears to be chosen by him personally, but it is not, it's just a PR exercise dressed up to make him look good. He may have read the books, but some PR person has handed them to him, for the purposes of building this list.

If you want to engage with fakery and treat it as real, knock yourself out.

[Anonymous]

I just finished Flashlight on his list and found it so frustrating. It could have been 25% shorter easily.

That said, I do usually pick up books on his list because they add diversity to my reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I miss having a president who reads books.

+1.

Obama’s annual best of lists are always great— I also love his music list. I’m sure he gets help but wow they’re good in highlighting both low and high brow, mass appeal and niche, etc.

yeah, it does achieve that, which kind of also undermines the list entirely.

Why?

Because it appears to be entirely "curated" in order to garner approval from naive people, such as yourself.

So? Every “best of” list is curated.

Yes, and when the NYtimes does it, say the "best of 2025" list, you know it's based on books they have reviewed that year. Not one person, but a group of journalists and they vote on it. When Obama produces a list, it appears to be chosen by him personally, but it is not, it's just a PR exercise dressed up to make him look good. He may have read the books, but some PR person has handed them to him, for the purposes of building this list.

If you want to engage with fakery and treat it as real, knock yourself out.

I 100% believe Obama has read every book on his lists even if he gets help selecting, etc. He reads pretty prolifically and always has.

Also, few of these books are really low brow. Something like King of Ashes is kind of highbrow lowbrow and I think it's totally credible that he read that and other books on his list, because... so did I. I read tons of trash mysteries, most new super popular books, high brow mysteries (well as high brow as mysteries get; but literary fiction with mystery components/focus are my favorites), memoirs of all stripes and modern fiction, including high brow. My own Top 10 reflects that and contains 2 of Obama's. I will also pick up 2 books because they are on his list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Obama has shared his favorites lists for 2025. He tends to have great taste in books.

On the books list: Paper Girl by Beth Macy, Flashlight by Susan Choi, We the People by Jill Lepore, The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy, There is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone, North Sun by Ethan Rutherford, 1929 by Andrew Sorkin, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith, What We Can Know by Ethan McEwan. In the same post he mentioned some books he had already mentioned as favorites this summer, and that list has Mark Twain by Ron Chernow, The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien, King of Ashes by SA Cosby, Rosarita by Anita Desai, Audition by Katie Kitamura, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Jones, Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst, Who is Government? by Michael Lewis, and The Siren's Call by Chris Hayes.

Are any of these books lighthearted ones that make you laugh and forget the problems in our daily lives?

That's what I'm interested in, quite honestly.

I could google reviews, but I'm too lazy at this point.