Barack Obama has some reading recommendations for you.
The former president took to Twitter on Friday to share the list of his favorite books of 2022.
His first pick is no surprise: Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. “I’m a bit biased on this one,” he admitted.
Next up was Emily St. John Mandel’s latest novel, Sea of Tranquility, which a Kirkus critic found “exciting to read, relevant, and satisfying.” Obama also recommended Hernan Diaz’s Kirkus Prize–winning Trust, as well as six other works of fiction: Namwali Serpell’s The Furrows, Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers, Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black Cake, George Saunders’ Liberation Day, Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House, and Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives.
Obama named Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, a Kirkus Prize finalist, as one of his favorites of the year, as well as Kate Beaton’s critically acclaimed graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands.
His other nonfiction picks were Stacy Schiff’s The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams and Imani Perry’s National Book Award–winning South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation.
Some of the writers on Obama’s list reacted on Twitter to being included. “Oh my goodness! And what astonishing company,” wrote Schiff.
And Egan tweeted, “Best holiday gift EVER!!!”
Best holiday gift EVER!!! @BarackObama pic.twitter.com/WEdRlPEad7
— Jennifer Egan (@Egangoonsquad) December 23, 2022
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
