How many of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021 have you read?
Yesterday, Barack Obama—former president and current book-recommending powerhouse—dropped his annual year-end list of favorite books, including some he recommended earlier this year and some new titles. Very useful if, like many other Americans, if you’re searching for a last-minute holiday gift—or just see how your year-end favorites stack up to Obama’s. (Now you can follow up “I liked Intimacies,” with, “. . . just like our 44th president.”) Here’s the complete list—how many have you read?
Lauren Groff, Matrix
Clint Smith, How the Word is Passed
Dawnie Walton, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
Andrea Elliott, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle
Ann Patchett, These Precious Days
Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart
Nadia Owusu, Aftershocks
Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
Qian Julie Wang, Beautiful Country
David Diop (tr. Anna Moschovakis), At Night All Blood Is Black
Te-Ping Chen, Land of Big Numbers
Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain
Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary
Benjamín Labatut (tr. Adrian Nathan West), When We Cease to Understand the World
Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
Eric Nguyen, Things We Lost to the Water
Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind
Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun
Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water
Katie Kitamura, Intimacies
