Obamas shop to honour small businesses

Washington

US President Barack Obama, joined by his daughters, went shopping on Saturday at Politics and Prose, an independent bookstore in the capital, in what has become a Thanksgiving weekend tradition for the first family to honour Small Business Saturday - an outing that mixed policy and purchases.

The president and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, browsed the shelves and chatted with customers before buying two bags full of books at the store, where they also shopped at this time last year. According to a White House print pool report, Mr Obama at one point held a patron's baby.

At the check-out counter, a cashier asked the president: "You from out of town?" Mr Obama replied: "I am. Do I get a discount for that?" Another cashier jokingly offered a "neighbour discount". "I'll take that," Mr Obama said, in an exchange captured by a television pool video posted by CBS News.

Mr Obama spotted a new book behind the register, The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House, by Chuck Todd, host of NBC's Meet the Press. The president noted that he looked "lonely" on the cover, and Malia asked: "How is he already writing a book?" With a smile, Malia added that her father looked sad on the cover. "Looks like a sad book," she said teasingly, in a typical Obama family exchange not often seen in public.

One customer asked Mr Obama about closing the military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the president responded, "We're working on it. Thank you. Any other issues?"

The Obamas bought 17 books, including several intended for children, among them titles from the Redwall fantasy series by Brian Jacques and the Junie B Jones series by Barbara Park. The memoir Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson was also selected.

One classic made the list, Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, and a few contemporary releases, like All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Nora Webster by Colm Toibin and The Laughing Monsters, by Denis Johnson. They bought two non-fiction titles: Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos and Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Dr Atul Gawande. Also among the Obamas' purchases were Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell and The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan.

Mr Obama said some of the purchases would be Christmas presents, but did not specify which titles were gifts.

Introduced in 2010, Small Business Saturday encourages shoppers to support local, independent stores, even as corporate retailers push for big spending on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. NYT