Non-Fiction Tuesday: Becoming

I'm pretty much obsessed with reading any biography or memoir about a First Lady.  Becoming by Michelle Obama is my most recent read  - and perhaps one of the most well written.  I took my time on this book, reading it only while I ran on the treadmill.  It made my exercise experience so much more enjoyable and after finishing it, I had a little bit of a book hangover.

First of all, because I like knowing about our First Ladies, much of what Michelle Obama wrote about wasn't new or overly revealing. I'd already become familiar with the outline of Michelle's life.  

However, hearing her tell her story in her own words was so much more enjoyable than reading what a reporter has written about her.  I felt like I could sit down with Michelle Obama and we could be good friends.  I liked that she revealed her struggles - from trying to juggle life as a nearly-single parent when Barack was often in Washington, D.C. and she was in Chicago, to her struggles with her career and finding a place for herself in the White House.  

This book is almost entirely free of sniping at the opposing political party, which is something that I really don't like to read, and I liked that a lot of the events she wrote about are ones I can recall seeing news snippets about when they happened.

Obviously Barack and Michelle Obama have left the White House, but they have many years ahead of them where they can continue to impact the world.  Obama's memoir is an interesting look at a woman who came from a very normal upbringing to become an icon all over the world.  Becoming makes her seem as human and reachable as every other suburban working mom.