Bill Gates ex-wife and philanthropist Melinda French Gates who helped direct $1 billion to libraries worldwide has shared a new reading list. 1. The list shared includes two debut novels and a new release from one of America’s best-known authors. In a recent Instagram post, Melinda Gates shared what she called “a few of my favourite reads from the last months. The three titles are Whistler by Ann Patchett, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, and Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. She closed the post with a question for her followers: what have you read recently that you loved, and what is on your list for fall? The picks combine established literary acclaim with strong reader enthusiasm. Two of the three are debut novels that have spent months on bestseller lists and climbed to the top of Goodreads rankings. The third is a summer release from a prizewinning author that went straight to No. For a woman who has spent decades funding access to books and information, the list is also a reminder of where much of her philanthropic work began.
In 1997, French Gates and her then-husband, Bill Gates, established the Gates Library Foundation. Over 20 years, the foundation invested $1 billion in libraries around the world. In 2014, the foundation’s director announced that its global libraries program would be phased out over the following three to five years.
French Gates said then that public libraries represent “free and open access to important information and knowledge. The reading list lands against a long philanthropic backdrop. A press release at the time described it as a nonprofit that would partner with public libraries in the United States and Canada to bring computers and digital information to the communities they serve. ” The effort grew well beyond North America.