Year 2, week 22: Becoming

This week's book:
Becoming
By Michelle Obama

This is late again, sorry guys! We had two two-hour delays that threw off my whole flipping week. But I finished Becoming by former first lady Michelle Obama this week. My amazing husband bought me the book for Christmas and it might be the only time in our 11 years of being together that he surprised me with a book. (To clarify he has bought books in the past, but this was the first time he surprised me with a book). This book is also the first time I have gotten all the way through a memoir of a person who has resided in the White House. I have bought both of the Clinton's book and couldn't get through them. I had read President Obama's first book, Dreams of My Father, before he had even become president. I actually saw Obama when he came to Ball State when I was a senior in college. He was and still is the most well spoken person I have ever seen. He was so filled with hope and calmness that my twenty-two-year-old heart just melted. I was excited to read Michelle's book, and I will be honest here, I wanted to see what she said about her husband and her children.

As much as I liked the book, I was a little disappointed in some elements of it. She hardly spent any time on the second term they were in office. Maybe it's a case of second child syndrome, where the second child doesn't get as much fanfare. And speaking of second children, Sasha (Obama's younger daughter) gets literally a sentence about Michelle being pregnant with her and delivery. Perhaps with Michelle Obama being more of the career centered woman, she focuses much more on her various jobs than to speak about her children in her book. I guess it's a book about her and not her children, but I would have liked a little more of an insight about her daughters. I did enjoy that she did speak about her miscarriage and difficulties of getting pregnant, it was very honest. But another element I was a little disappointed in was the lack of support she gave her husband any time he was running for office. She doesn't like politics and didn't really want her husband to go into it. She even goes as far as to tell him that he probably will not win whenever he's on the verge of running for office. Not that I am all “stand by your man no matter what” or anything, but come on, support your partner's dreams. Perhaps the case of the Obamas not becoming a couple until their late twenties/early thirties and both had made their owns lives are the explanation of their relationship.

I'm assuming that if you like the Obamas you will enjoy the book. If you don't like them you wouldn't want to pick the book up.