# 11 books President Obama thinks everyone should read **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 19, 2017, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570 "2017-01-19T20:11:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/21 "2017-01-20T00:08:12Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > no Iliad, no Aeneid, no Arabian Nights, no Dante or Ariosto or Tasso, nothing by Montaigne or Shakespeare or Milton, no Henry Fielding, no Goethe, no Jane Austen, no Stendhal, no Pushkin, no Dickens, no Balzac, no Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, no George Eliot or Thomas Hardy. I guarantee that had Obama gave an interview and listed those as his favourite books you would have accused him of giving cliched answers and claimed that he probably hadn’t read any of them. Actually, I bet you haven’t read any of them yourself. I bet your internet history shows a google search “famous books and authors…” ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/22 "2017-01-20T00:15:03Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > No classics of Western and world civilization, no Iliad, no Aeneid, no Arabian Nights, no Dante or Ariosto or Tasso, nothing by Montaigne or Shakespeare or Milton, no Henry Fielding, no Goethe, no Jane Austen, no Stendhal, no Pushkin, no Dickens, no Balzac, no Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, no George Eliot or Thomas Hardy. > > One might say Obama is sticking to modern books. I don’t think that’s true, I just think that he has either never read the classics or couldn’t appreciate them when he tried… As a literate and well-educated gentleman with degrees from Columbia and Harvard, Obama figures that, like him, you’ve already read all of those. You have, haven’t you? ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/23 "2017-01-20T00:18:10Z")
I’ve only read about half of them but they are all very solidly in the Great Modern Literature pantheon. I wonder if the OP has read a single one of them. Imagine trump’s favorite books … if you care to. The only book I’m sure he’s read besides The Art of The Deal is Mein Kampf, apparently a favorite. I sure wish I was joking. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/24 "2017-01-20T00:24:04Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Imagine trump’s favorite books … if you care to. “There are some books, right over there.” > **[Donald Trump Loves Reading Books. Here's A Book. He Loves Reading It.](https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-loves-reading-books-heres-a-book-he-loves-reading-it)** > > Of course it's real. We think. Trump may not actually love it. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/25 "2017-01-20T00:28:53Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > And I take issue with the belief that the _Iliad_ is obviously better to read than, say, _Song of Solomon_. Both are great literature. The _Song of Solomon_ isn’t music? _flees_ ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/26 "2017-01-20T00:35:07Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > _Gone Girl_??? Yeah, right? I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t fit even within the rest of that list. I probably shouldn’t talk – I’ve tried **Gilead** and **The Woman Warrior** multiple times and haven’t made it through them. :o ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/27 "2017-01-20T06:14:10Z")
It’s nice that the OP is recommending that we all read Balzac and Shakespeare and all them other high-falutin’ Greeks. Wasn’t so long ago that a small-town librarian would be shunned for providing access to the “dirty books” written by Chaucer! Rabelais! and Bal-zac! I guess tastes have changed, even among conservatives, since the halcyon days of the 1910s. Leading us to wonder how you can be a “classic” today if you were a “dirty book” not so very long ago, and how it is that the canon of classics actually has changed over the years… Worth noting is that despite being creations of the late twentieth century, both \*\*Gilead \*\*and **Song of Solomon** are very difficult to understand without a solid knowledge of the “classics”–in the case of **Gilead** , that includes particularly the Bible. For erudition, for depth of challenge to the reader, for understanding and illustration of the human condition, I would stack \*\*Gilead \*\*up against anything Hardy, Pushkin, or Milton ever wrote, to name three of the authors appearing on the OP’s list. (Maybe Balzac too. Scuse me for livin’ but I never read it.) But if it wasn’t written by an author the OP had heard of before the age of 18 or so, an author widely acknowledged at the time as a master of the craft of writing, then it must not count as a classic or perhaps as any good at all. Such an odd and limited way of looking at literature. Poor OP! ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/28 "2017-01-20T06:28:42Z")
I think the link within the link shows how brilliant and well-read the man is. > **[Transcript: President Obama on What Books Mean to Him (Published 2017)](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/books/transcript-president-obama-on-what-books-mean-to-him.html)** > > Michiko Kakutani, our chief book critic, met with Mr. Obama to discuss the books and writers that have influenced his life and presidency. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/29 "2017-01-20T07:17:19Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > _Gone Girl_??? Here is what Obama said about that book: > [@](#): > > There were books that would blend, I think, really good writing with thriller genres. I mean, I thought “Gone Girl” was a well-constructed, well-written book. That’s the scope of it. It was the part of the conversation that started with Obama saying “Sometimes you read fiction just because you want to be someplace else” and the interviewer asking him about these “escapist” books that he reads for fun, to get away from his head. Read the New York Times article linked for context. The headline is pure clickbait and not at all the “11 books President Obama thinks evereyone should read.” It’s “11 books Obama mentioned in a New York Time interview.” ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/30 "2017-01-20T13:24:07Z")
[Treating the OP as serious] I was surprised I had only read 3 on the list. Thrillers are my escapist preference, and **Gone Girl** doesn’t fit in the top 10 - hell even the top 50 or 100 - even if we were restricted to that genre. Only reason I’d put it on any list was because it was such a popular phenomenon, so people could read for themselves what the buzz was about. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/31 "2017-01-20T13:32:57Z")
> [@](#): > > I wonder if the OP has read a single one of them. I wonder if the OP _ **can** _ read? I mean, come on, a fifth grader would have understood from the article that these are clearly NOT “11 books the president thinks everyone should read”. I guess maybe it’s lack of reading comprehension really. But sheesh, have a little self respect. At least read enough of the article to get the damn title right! Also I thought thread titles had to actually be descriptive. Whereas this one is purposely misleading. How is a click bait title NOT considered trolling, I wonder? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2017, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570/32 "2017-01-20T14:07:13Z")
**[Moderating]** I think we’ve pretty well established by now that this thread is based on a false premise, so I’m just going to close it. I can’t tell whether the OP deliberately falsified the premise, or if he simply misunderstood the article he read, but either way, the effect is the same. If anyone wishes to continue any of the serious discussion that followed, please open a new thread with a non-poisoned well to do so. That said: > [@](#): > > Quoth **Snarky\_Kong** : > > Also, those aren’t a list of 10 books Obama is recommending everyone read. Good job lying about that in the title. They’re just ones he mentioned in an interview. > [@](#): > > Quoth **elbows** : > > I wonder if the OP can read? I mean, come on, a fifth grader would have understood from the article that these are clearly NOT “11 books the president thinks everyone should read”. You two have both been here long enough to know that accusations of lying and personal insults are both prohibited outside of the Pit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/11-books-president-obama-thinks-everyone-should-read/777570.md?page=1)