The Nightly Reading Habit Obama Kept Even as President
The White House is not a place that encourages stillness. Yet Obama carved out reading time every single night he lived there. In a 2009 interview with Newsweek, he explained his routine: after reviewing briefing papers and working on speeches until around 11:30 p.m., he would read for roughly half an hour before turning in. In a January 2017 interview with New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani — one of his final conversations as president — Obama reflected on what that discipline gave him: the ability to "slow down and get perspective" and "get in somebody else's shoes." He said reading "allowed me to sort of maintain my balance during the course of eight years, because this is a place that comes at you hard and fast and doesn't let up." Post-presidency, he has expanded that window to roughly an hour most nights.
Why Obama Reads Fiction: The Empathy Argument
Obama has been unusually direct about why fiction matters — and unusually specific about what it teaches. In a September 2015 conversation with novelist Marilynne Robinson, he offered one of his most quoted statements on reading: "When I think about how I understand my role as citizen ... the most important stuff I've learned I think I've learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there's still truth there to be found ... And the notion that it's possible to connect with someone else even though they're very different from you." He also told Kakutani that reading fiction "exercises those muscles" of empathy, and that sometimes "you read fiction just because you want to be someplace else."
Obama's Annual Reading Lists: A Tradition That Moves Publishers
Every summer and every December, Obama publishes a list of his recent favorites — a practice he has maintained since 2009. The lists are genuinely eclectic. A single year might include a Pulitzer-winning novel, a work of rigorous social science, a genre thriller, and an international memoir. His 2023 list included James McBride's The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, Matthew Desmond's Poverty, by America, and David Grann's The Wager. His 2024 favorites ranged from Sally Rooney's Intermezzo to Alexei Navalny's memoir Patriot. When a book lands on one of his lists, sales reliably spike — a phenomenon publishers and booksellers have come to call the Obama effect.
The Books That Shaped Barack Obama
Obama has been consistent across decades about the books most formative to him. Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which he first read at Occidental College, is the title he has most often cited as the novel that shaped his identity. Robert Caro's The Power Broker captivated him at age 22; presenting Caro with the National Humanities Medal in 2010, Obama said reading the book had left him "mesmerized" and that it "helped to shape how I think about politics." He named Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin as a book he could not have done without in the White House, drawing on it directly when assembling a cabinet that included former rivals. Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, which he picked up while campaigning in Iowa, produced what he called one of his favorite characters in all of fiction.
Reading Across the Divide: Using Books to Understand America
Obama has repeatedly used books as a tool for crossing cultural and ideological distance. During the 2017 Kakutani interview he named Gabriel Garcia Marquez, V.S. Naipaul, and Junot Diaz among the authors who helped him understand worlds different from his own. His lists consistently feature writers from across racial, national, and political backgrounds. In the Robinson conversation he noted with concern that American reading habits have become balkanized: "It's not so much, I think, that people don't read at all; it's that everybody is reading in their niche." For Obama, a wide reading life is a civic practice. His 2005 keynote to the American Library Association made the case directly: "Reading is the gateway skill that makes all other learning possible."
What Readers Can Learn from Obama's Approach
Obama's reading life offers a replicable model, not just inspiration. He reads across genres rather than defaulting to one. He protects reading time even under extreme pressure, treating it as non-negotiable. He uses fiction and nonfiction as complements — fiction to build empathy and texture, nonfiction to understand systems and history. He reflects publicly on what he reads, which deepens retention. And he recommends books generously and specifically, noting not just titles but why they matter. For anyone trying to read more deliberately, his example is less about volume than intentionality — choosing books that challenge your assumptions and keep you connected to lives unlike your own.
