Becoming by Michelle Obama

Takeaways:
– She really didn’t want it – the presidency, and its impact on her family.
– She is so, so, so devoted to her daughters.
– She loves Barack.
– Barack is a great guy, and so, so, so devoted to his daughters.

Extraordinary parenting under extraordinary circumstances.

And the other major takeaway is the humility.  She gets it from her mother (a great character), who always brushed aside over-glowing compliments on the accomplishments of her two kids, Craig and Michelle, with: they’re not special.  “The South Side is full of kids like that.”  Michelle repeats it – thinking of her grade school classmates, “I wasn’t any better than them.”  She was just lucky, lucky to have an advocate in her mother, who yanked her out of a bad classroom; and lucky not to get randomly shot in a drive-by, like kids in her old neighborhood need to fear today.

Quibbles?  Maybe Barack comes across as a little TOO perfect here, but, see point three.  She is – they are – obviously still in love.  She mentions the little “fist bump” she once gave him during some nationally televised appearance, and I remember it – such an intimate little moment.

And hey, maybe he IS perfect.  Sure holding up as pretty well, as a president, in hindsight, and in comparison.

Best fiction book:

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

Best non-fiction book:

10 Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

I’m so “done” with happiness.  I think I’ll seek out some books about finding curmudgeonliness next.
No, seriously, I’m afraid I won’t be able to give this book a fair review, because I don’t exactly remember what led me to obtain and read it, and I’m not really that interested in happiness anymore… I’m kind of there, not meaning I’m happy all the time, but I kinda know everything there is to know about my own happiness, now, after half a century.
So the book – it’s fine.  It’s one woman’s one-year project.  (Yet another “My Year of…”)  At least she wasn’t surreptitiously trying to come to terms with the death of a parent or anything like that.
She tries so many things, you’re bound to come across a couple of good ideas to apply to your own life.
God, I felt bad for her husband, though.  Is this what married-with-children life is like?  The abyss was one scene where her two little girls were fighting, and she discovers her husband upstairs taking a nap.  She wakes him up and says, “This is your problem! You need to fix this!”  Kill me now, I can imagine him thinking.
She sprinkles in scenes like this where she is decidedly NOT happy, which always starts to feel like a nice, humanizing, relatable touch – but then they always end with a sappy, happy ending.  You’re missing the point of showing us your less-than-perfect side, Gretchen.
But hey!  This is supposed to be a HAPPY book…  why all of this, who woke who from a nap, and who failed to live down to my imperfect expectations..  I’m sorry, though, I’m failing to come up with one excellent life lesson that I can apply to my life going forward, except to really and truly this time STOP with the happiness books.