These are Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2020 that you need to read
Barack Obama has released a list of his favourite books of 2020 as part of his annual tradition of sharing his curated round-up of recommendations, something he’s been doing since 2015 when he was still in office.
The former US President is known for being a voracious reader, as such the 17 titles, which he announced on Twitter and Instagram, are an electric range of fiction, non-fiction and memoir, and cover everything from race and segregation to the climate crisis.
In his social media post, he joked that he was “deliberately omitting what I think is a pretty good book”, his own, the bestselling memoir A Promised Land, and said of the titles: “I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did”.
Most of the books selected are by American authors, with Emily St John Manel, a Canadian author, making the list with her novel The Glass Hotel.
His selection for 2019 similarly featured a broad range of leading titles, including Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo and Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which took both the literary and television world by storm following the BBC adaptation.
In order to help you decide which books you read in 2021, here’s a round-up of Barack Obama’s favourites. If the former president can read 17 books in a year, so can you!
You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world testing and expert advice. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
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