Becoming - Michelle Obama

⭐ 9.0/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

I can't say I was expecting to like this one. This book is very warm and wholesome and those aren't usually qualities I'm looking for in a book. It turns out Michelle is also a very normal person, but I think that's what made this book so relatable and interesting. She was a lower-middle class girl that became an upper-middle class woman who liked her job, her kids, sitcoms, fast food, and didn't care much for politics or high society. That's why you really identify with her and the significance of the turn her life takes when she falls in love with a interesting, but mostly normal guy who quickly becomes a celebrity, then the most powerful man in the world, and everything changes rapidly. In biographies of famous people I always wish there were more of the small, day to day stuff and this is full of that. She does an awesome job of describing how it feels to go from being a normal person to a celebrity, and how that affects her personal and family life.

This book also got me a lot more interested in Barak as a person. I just read an anti-president book, but this one was nice in terms of balance. Barack was pretty radical in his youth, and it was interesting to see how he handled and navigated the presidency, and it makes me wonder if he looks back and wishes he could have done more, or done things differently. This book is very much about Barack as well as Michelle, and it doesn't always paint him in a super positive way, but I appreciate the honesty.

Anyways, this is simply a great book for a lot of reasons, and I feel like I could recommend it to pretty much everyone confident that anyone would like aspects of it.