White House Releases President Obama’s Ambitious Reading List

In a move surely designed to wrest attention from the publicity lamprey that is Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the White House has released President Obama’s summer reading list.

The list is a literary analog for a well-balanced meal, comprising a wide range of forms and genres. Among the chosen few are Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See

, and All That Is by the late great James Salter. In the nonfiction corner, Elizabeth Kolpert’s climate change tome, The Sixth Extinction, rubs shoulders with, Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow’s capacious bio of a certain bygone POTUS. Rounding out the bunch are Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s much-hyped memoir about race in America, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest, The Lowland.

Together, the six titles — supposed to keep the president occupied for the duration of his sixteen-day vacation on Martha’s Vineyard — comprise a whopping 2,771 pages. Perhaps Barack is a closet speed-reader. Or maybe we should take this list with a grain of salt(er).