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Even though summer’s coming to end, former President Barack Obama says not so fast and offered some summer reading suggestions while also paying homage to the life of literary legend, Toni Morrison.
“It’s August, so I wanted to let you know about a few books I’ve been reading this summer, in case you’re looking for some suggestions,” Obama wrote in a recent Instagram post.
“To start, you can’t go wrong by reading or re-reading the collected works of Toni Morrison. Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else — they’re transcendent, all of them. You’ll be glad you read them. And while I’m at it, here are a few more titles you might want to explore.”
Morrison is a Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who died August 5 at New York’s Montefiore Medical Center. She was 88 years old.
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After Morrison’s unexpected death, Obama tweeted that she “was a national treasure, as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page,”
“Her writing was a beautiful, meaningful challenge to our conscience and our moral imagination. What a gift to breathe the same air as her, if only for a while,” he continued in the tweet.
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Morrison has long been one of Obama’s favorite authors and in 2012, he honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Other books that resonated with our 44th President includes How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu, which is timely given that the current person in office acts as if he has an ax to grind against immigrants.
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“You’ll get a better sense of the complexity and redemption within the American immigrant story with Dinaw Mengestu’s novel,” Obama wrote.
Here is Obama’s full list of suggested reading that’s good enough to take you into the reminder of the year.
Exhalation, by Ted Chiang
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Wolf Hall’s by Hilary Mantel
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Inland by Tea Obreht
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
Maid by Stephanie Land
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