In which we react to every book President Obama has recommended while in office

...with reaction GIFs, duh!

JUST KIDDING. That is a LOT of great books (86! 5 more GIFs than the law allows).
However you vote, you have to admit that the man is incredibly well read. We'll be reacting to some of the books he recommends, linking to past reviews of some as well. Enjoy this reading list to end all reading lists as we bid farewell to our Bookworm-In-Chief:

*List adapted from a post by Entertainment Weekly. (yeah, we read that too.)

The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston
Brown Girl Dreaming, Jacqueline Woodson
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Nora Webster, Colm Toibin

The Laughing Monsters, Denis Johnson
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, Evan Osnos
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Dr. Atul Gawande
Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, Katherine Rundell
The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan
Redwall series, Brian Jacques
Junie B. Jones series, Barbara Park
Nuts To You, Lynn Rae Perkins
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins
Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
All That Is, James Salter

The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison
Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch

Gilead, Marylinne Robinson
Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam
The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton
Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
The Quiet American, Graham Greene

YES! THE CANCER WARD IS AMAZING!

Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Gandhi’s autobiography
Working, Studs Terkel
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
To the End of the Land, David Grossman
Purity, Jonathan Franzen
A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul
Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff
Lush Life, Richard Price
Netherland, Joseph O’Neill
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Salman Rushdie
Redeployment, Phil Klay
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Plainsong, Kent Haruf
The Way Home, George Pelecanos

What Is the What, Dave Eggers
Philosophy & Literature, Peter S Thompson
Collected Poems, Derek Walcott
In Dubious Battle, John Steinbeck
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris
John Adams, David McCullough
Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, Fred Kaplan
Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Jonathan Alte
FDR, Jean Edward Smith

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
 Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, Thomas L Friedman
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Steve Coll

Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert A. Caro
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr
A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers

The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria
Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American, Richard S Tedlow
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Katherine Boo

Phew! That's a tough act to follow, sir. Enjoy your time off to read!

New York Times' Notable Books of 2016

In which I personally review as many of the Notables as possible*, in Gif form.

*There are still a handful of neglected notables on my to read pile (it's a big pile) so any books  missing from this list do not represent a non-endorsement--there are far too many "NOPE" gifs out there for me to resist including books I didn't like.

With the exception of a couple, themes of home and family really seem to dominate my list. Did any of the books on the list surprise you? Any grabbed your attention?

Without further ado:

Zero K. by Don DeLillo

This one completely lost my interest but I feel like giving it another chance.

War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans

Captivating multi-generational tale of fathers and sons, art and war.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Wonderfully, deeply, unsettling.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

A little light on the promised steam punk but overall a powerful narrative.

Today Will be Different by Maria Semple

Quirky!

Reputations by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Really good, really short. Kudos!

The Nix by Nathan Hill

This book is so right on it's a little scary.

The Mortifications by Derek Palacio

That ending, though. :(

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

It's that good.

Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer

Seriously, the audiobook version is EVERYthing

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

The use of patois achieves stunning results.

Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo by Boris Fishman

Unexpected, enigmatic, and engrossing.

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

Love letter to home.

Before The Fall by Noah Hawley

Kind of surprised this made the notable list over some other books but it was a solidly enjoyable read.

The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan

Haunting.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Featured in our "Books for an Ugly Cry" post earlier this year.
Hug all your loved ones!

[Censored]

I'm a big fan of Banned Books displays in libraries and bookshops around this time of year (Banned Books Week is coming to a close on Saturday). They are by nature provocative, another thing I enjoy--especially in books. When we put together these displays we are provoking a conversation about censorship and intellectual freedom (a big deal to librarians) that we need to keep having, year after year. Book challenges in the United States continue, with the same books popping up on the lists over and over. They are removed or attempted to be removed from public and school library shelves and from course curricula. A number of book challenges have made the news this year, including a proposed (and vetoed) bill right here in Virginia, and while we see a lack of diversity in the publishing industry, the list of book challenges year to year are rather diverse.

How many of your youthful favorites on this table?

"Criminalizes the Foresting industry"?!  

This year the official Banned Books Week Facebook page posted a poll asking people to vote on which character from a banned book they would most like to have lunch with.

Willy Wonka won by a substantial margin. I personally find him to be too unsettling to dine with.

2015 saw a lot of challenges to books with LGBT themes. From the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, the top ten most frequently challenged books of 2015 are:

Looking for Alaska, by John Green

• Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.

Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James

• Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).

I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings

• Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.

Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin

• Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon

• Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).

The Holy Bible

• Reasons: Religious viewpoint.

Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel

• Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).

Habibi, by Craig Thompson

• Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.

Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter

• Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.

Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan

• Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).

*Note the burning books

A little history*: The Decameron, a 14th century Italian collection of short stories, was one of many books (see also Candide by Voltaire, and The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer) banned from US mail under the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act (Comstock Law) of 1873, which banned the sending or receiving of works containing "obscene," "filthy," or "inappropriate" material.

*Thanks, Wikipedia.

I thought I'd share with you my top ELEVEN (I will not be oppressed by this global obsession with round numbers) favorite challenged books. These come from the ALA OIF list of the top 100 challenges of the past 25 years (as long as they've been keeping track).

Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
*I was devastated when the new edition of this series came out a few years ago without Stephen Gammel's haunting, disturbing, creepy as anything illustrations.
The Witches, by Roald Dahl
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

Many more of my favorites are on these lists, most of them childhood favorites from the hours and hours spent hiding in a corner of my neighborhood branch captivated by a stack of picture books. I can't imagine my life without them.

The Ridiculous Side of Lists

Anyone who reads knows the value of a list. The personal book list—a list of what you’ve read and of what you want to read—is a map. It can be practical, keeping you from going back to the same place twice (or inspiring you to go back to the same place twice), and helping you on to your next destination. It can also just be fun to make and talk about.

For the past five years an editor at the Observer newspaper has been conducting a giant and provocative experiment in list-making. In 2011 Robert McCrum (author of the fantastic biography Wodehouse) began to list the 100 best novels written in English.

There was no ranking inside the list; it developed chronologically, from 1678—The Pilgrim’s Progress—to a working cut-off point of 2000—True History of the Kelly Gang. The rules were few—only one novel per author—and sometimes vague: what, after all, is a classic? or even a novel? And rather than release the list all at once, each of the 100 selections was announced weekly with a short essay. For two years readers around the world could cheer or balk at the choices, and, when it was all done, wonder how such-and-such a book could possibly be passed over.

The task was, as the Irish Times put it, like “running naked into no-man’s-land with a target painted on your chest and a kick-me sign pinned to your back.” But McCrum embraced all controversy. The Observer invited readers to vent their disagreement with the list, compiled an alternative list based on reader suggestions, and published an essay critiquing the lack of female authors in the list. As McCrum himself wrote, “like all lists, ours is intended to sponsor discussion.”

The list of greatest novels reached it’s 100^th novel last year, but in January of this year a new, more Quixotic list began: the 100 best nonfiction books of all time. Some of the rules stayed the same—in English, arranged chronologically—but others only got looser, perhaps to provoke more readers, perhaps to introduce more variety. Instead of restricting itself to one form, like the novel, this list looks at all “essential works of philosophy, drama, history, science and popular culture.” 

So far the Observer has named 30 books on the list, this time working backwards from 2014. Some of them can be a little head-scratching—how is Waiting for Godot nonfiction?—but McCrum isn’t looking for uniformity, nor to mirror your opinions, nor to give an objective view of the literary landscape. “Every thoughtful person must concede that any list is bound to have its ridiculous side,” he writes. 

I think of the word “best” in these lists as a dare and a half-joke. The list serves as an aid for other lists: yours. Already the 30 choices in the nonfiction list have reminded me of things I’ve read and loved (Against Interpretation) and of things I’ve long planned to read (No Logo) and suggested to me fascinating things I’ve never heard of (A Book of Mediterranean Food). So follow along with the Observer with your own book list close-by—on Library Thing or Good Reads or scrawled on a scrap of paper like a recipe. Follow along if you don’t yet have a book list. Follow along only if you want to carpet bomb the Observer with emails about your favorite book. Lists are useful, but they’re also ridiculous and fun.

From foodies to homebodies: books for everybody on your list!

Did we mention that books make great gifts? 

For Dog Lovers:

For Foodies:

“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

For Gardeners:

“Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose.” 

― Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

For outdoor adventurers:

“Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.” 

― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

For Homebodies:

“The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.” 

― Roald Dahl, Matilda

You're welcome.