The book crew at the Washington Post is once again trying to predict which titles will be featured on Barack Obama’s summer reading list.
Post reporter Sophia Nguyen compiled a list of books selected by the writers for its Book World section; the writers believe these titles will gain the imprimatur of the former president and book lover.
The writers predict that Obama will favor fiction on his list, “in part because Obama generally adds more nonfiction to his ‘best of’ lists, posted in December,” writes Nguyen.
The fiction titles the Post crew anticipate on Obama’s list are Joseph O’Neill’s Godwin, Adelle Waldman’s Help Wanted, Miranda July’s All Fours, Rachel Khong’s Real Americans, Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, Percival Everett’s James, and Amor Towles’ Table for Two.
The four nonfiction books that Post journalists think will make an appearance are Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year, Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest, Kyle Chayka’s Filterworld, and Amitav Ghosh’s Smoke and Ashes.
The Post staffers also predicted a book that will “probably not” appear on Obama’s list: Great Expectationsby Vinson Cunningham, the novel by a former Obama White House assistant that a critic for Kirkus says is “plainly” based on the ex-president and his 2008 presidential campaign.
The Post crew tried predicting Obama’s summer list last year, too, and did a pretty good job: They correctly named four of the nine books that Obama ended up recommending. There’s no word yet on when the former president will drop this year’s list; he posted his summer 2023 recommendations on July 20.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
