Year 4, week 21: Pete and Chasten Buttigieg

Two books this week, from Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten:

I Have Something to Tell You

By Chasten Buttigieg

A while back I read Mayor Pete's first book. Pete Buttigieg was one of dozens of the people who were running for president last year. The difference with Mayor Pete is that he's about my age give or take about five years. He was the mayor of South Bend and he happens to be gay. This week's book is Pete's husband's book. I didn't know much about Chasten before I checked out this book from the library. I only knew he was a high school teacher and he was married to Pete. 

I actually finished the book in about a day and a half, thanks to our one year old not wanting to sleep this week. Where Pete is so accomplished and I am sure he will be president some day, like seriously l am 100% sure he will, Chasten is a bit more relatable. Chasten didn't know what he wanted to do with his life and so college was hard; he tried to be an actor, worked at Starbucks and had crippling student/medical debt. He had a hard time coming out to his family and was sexually assaulted later. Chasten also talks like a person next door. His memoir is very much more down to Earth and his vocabulary is more boy-next-door. In his own words, he humanizes his husband. 

I would highly recommend this book. 

Trust: America's Best Chance

By Pete Buttigieg

This is Pete Buttigieg's second book. The joke goes that while the rest of us were binging Netflix during the pandemic, Pete wrote a book. This book was a little more dry then his first book, which was more of a memoir of his life at the time. It took me a minute to get into this book; he talks quite a bit about how a lot of people are struggling to trust the people around them, and especially the people that are in charge. He talks about police brutality and the BLM movement, and how people are losing trust. He talks about how the people running the country lost a lot of trust with their actions over the last four years. 

I listened to the book as an audiobook and it helped me get even more fired up because he just has a presidential voice. He does talk about his run for president and that was interesting as well. The book ends with his concession speech when he announced he was suspending his run for president for the 2020 election. I had never heard/read the transcript before, and I was glad I had read Chasten's book first because Chasten had discussed his part of the speech in his book as well. This book ended up being very inspiring to what a person of substance can say. 

I would highly recommend it. 

Added note: my sweet husband and I have started calling Mayor Pete, "Secretary-Mayor Pete" and will keep adding his new tittle until he becomes President...Secretary-Mayor Pete someday.