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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. 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.

A post shared by Barack Obama (@barackobama) on Aug 14, 2019 at 11:18am PDT

Barack Obama released his summer reading list yesterday, and it featured a local author. Specifically, Obama singled out Seattle-area sci-fi legend Ted Chiang's short story collection Exhalation. (I loved this book, too.)

Other books on Obama's list include everything by Toni Morrison, Maid by Stephanie Land, Inland by Téa Obreht (who will be reading in Seattle next week), Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, Lauren Wilkinson's American Spy, and Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

I will let local treasure Nancy Pearl have the last word on this one:

I wish we still had a president who read https://t.co/3H0kxmmGxy

— Nancy Pearl (@Nancy_Pearl) August 15, 2019