Becoming Michelle Obama, by Michelle Obama →

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Michelle Obama starts her book, “Becoming Michelle Obama,” saying:

“I’m an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey. In sharing my story, I hope to help create space for other stories and voices to widen the pathway for who belongs and why.”

When Michelle started the Presidential campaign in Iowa, it turned out that how she saw herself became how she began to see the people who had turned out to listen to her. When she stood up to speak to a small group gathered in a home to her hear talk, she said:

“Let me tell you about me. I’m Michelle Obama, raised on the South Side of Chicago, in a little apartment on the top floor of a two-story house that felt much like this one. My dad was a water-pump operator for the city. My mom stayed at home to raise my brother and me.”

Michelle said she liked her own story and became comfortable telling it. She said that she realized that she was telling the people who had come to listen to her, despite the difference in skin color, that they reminded her of her own family.

In talking about her neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Mrs. Obama writes, “Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s a vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.” Maybe this insight is partly why we see her as a meticulous planner. It is reflected in her approach to her studies in high school and at Princeton and her approach to the various professional jobs she held. Being a planner was her method of pushing through potential failure.

 Michelle wrote about her first impressions when she met Barack, telling us that she was fascinated with how different he was and how they were opposites in many ways.  She said she was a planner obsessed with checking the boxes on her to-do list, and he was spontaneous. He must have also seen the differences and the story of their first kiss shows him seeking her approval carefully rather than just sweeping her off her feet.” She said about that event, “he was looking at me curiously, with a trace of a smile. “Can I kiss you?” he asked. And with that, I leaned in, and everything felt clear.”

Mrs. Obama writes about her critics. “I was female, black, and strong, which to certain people, maintaining a certain mindset, translated only to ‘angry.’ It was another bad cliché that’s been forever used to sweep minority women to the perimeter of every room, an unconscious signal not to listen to what we’ve got to say.”

The book surprised me with how much I enjoyed it—a different, must-read book.

Michelle’s Quotes

“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something, and that’s the end.” 

“If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”

“Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”

 “Do we settle for the world or work for it as it should be?” 

“Failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.”

The Enemy, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child

It is the first of 1990 and the Berlin Wall has come down. On New Year’s Eve a General and three subordinates arrive in Washington DC on their way to from Germany to Fort Irwin California, but they stop off overnight. The General travels 289 miles south to check into a seedy motel to have sex where he is later found dead.

Military Police Major Jack Reacher from the nearby North Carolina Army base comes to investigate and the scene leads him to investigate a strip joint across the street.  He winds up beating up the owner but doesn’t find any answers.  Later, back at the base, Reacher gets another call: the general’s wife has been brutally killed during an apparent burglary of their Virginia home. Reacher teams up with Lieutenant Summer, an attractive black female MP, and they go to investigate.

Next a body of Special Forces soldier whom Reacher saw at the strip joint is found naked, dead and mutilated near the base. It turns out to be the same soldier who signed a complaint against Reacher about the fight at the club. The Special Forces think Reacher did it and plan to kill him.

With all this activity going on Reacher and his brother Joe go to Paris to visit their dying mother. More dead bodies show up. With Reacher out of the country the base commander issues a warrant for Reacher’s arrest.

With the Berlin Wall coming down the Army sees changes coming, with what seems to be the end to the Cold War the Army is facing a massive restructuring of purpose and personnel. It seems that Reacher’s reassignment to the North Carolina base and the new base commander may be connected to these changes and Reacher wonders if the death of the two-star general and the others may be too.

Child’s “The Enemy” weaves it story well. It gives us some insight in to Reacher as we learn more about his mother’s life.

The 8th book in the Jack Reacher Series. See more about those books and about Lee Child at BJ’s Favorite Authors. Click here

Quotes

“The Reacher brothers' need for caffeine makes heroin addiction look like an amusing little take-it-or-leave-it sideline.” 

“Everybody has a choice in life.”

 “This was like July 13th, 1943, the pivotal day of the Battle of the Kursk. We were like Alexander Vasilevsky, the Soviet general. If we attacked now, this minute, we had to keep on and on attacking until the enemy was run off his feet and the war was won. If we bogged down or paused for breath even for a second, we would be overrun again.” 

Put A Cherry On Top, The Secrets of Creating An Artful Life, by Ben Buhunin

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Amazon said about Ben Behunin’s book, “Put a Cherry on Top, The Secrets of Creating an Artful Life,” that “This book will encourage you to return to the place in your own life where you lived without fear and believed you were an artist.” The book's message seems to be that we have the power to change the world around us and that we can change whatever we do into a work of art.

The cover and left-hand pages tell us this is a coloring book, and some may color in it, but most of us will likely enjoy the quotes and artwork.

About one-fourth of the book is a memoir about Behunin’s story of becoming a potter and then a writer. It begins with his first year of high school, his service for his church in Germany, and his return to work in a pottery shop. We learn of his marriage and how he made a living as a potter and then was drawn into writing.

My wife brought a copy of this book from her “women only” book club. She told me about Ben’s life story, which he had presented at the monthly club meeting.  Ben quickly adds converts to his skills in pottery and writing. A local radio show in Salt Lake City heard about him from a lady in San Diego who had learned of his work at her book club.  

A very inspiring book.

Ben Behunin Quotes

“There is more to a boy than what his mother sees. There is more to a boy than what his father dreams. Inside every boy lies a heart that beats. And sometimes it screams, refusing to take defeat. And sometimes, his father's dreams aren't big enough, and sometimes his mother's vision isn't long enough. And sometimes the boy has to dream his dreams and break through the clouds with his sunbeams.” 

“We have to bloom where we are planted, enjoy the sunlight while we can, and thank the heavens for the rain that not only beats us down but feeds us and makes us stronger.” 

― Ben Behunin, Remembering Isaac: The Wise and Joyful Potter of Niederbipp

The Hard Way, A Jack Reacher Novel, by Lee Child

Lee Child's 10th novel, The Hard Way, begins with Reacher arriving at a New York café and ordering from the sidewalk table. “Espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table, he saw a man’s life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick.”

The book starts right out in true form presenting Reacher’s amazing command of the tiniest details and observations.

What he sees soon leads him to ex-army officer Edward Lane and six Special Forces veterans who enlist him to track down Lanes’ kidnapped daughter and wife. Lane’s prior wife was also kidnapped and then killed 5 years before, so he has no intention of calling in the FBI this time.

Lane's lives and seems to be headquartered with his little private army in the well-known Dakota apartment close by to the shady sections of SoHo, Greenwich Village, and other challenging areas near enough by to make them vulnerable. 

As Reacher works to help Lane find the kidnappers, he learns of some chilling details of Lane’s past which reveal a horrible drama in a long forgotten nasty little war.

Childs amazing plotting skills twist and turn, bad guys become good guys and  the story ends with a standoff in a tiny little English farm in the country.  A trail of blood and gore mark this thriller.  

Quotes

“You think you've been in deep shit before, and then you realise you have absolutely no conception of how deep shit can really be.” 

“I’m not much to talk about. What you see is what you get.” 

“He liked the electric darkness and the hot dirty air and the blasts of noise and traffic and the manic barking sirens and the crush of people. It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.” 

“Special Forces guys were usually small. They were usually lean, fast, and whippy. Built for endurance and stamina and full of smarts and cunning. Like foxes, not like bears.” 

See BJ’s Favorite Authors Section for all Lee Child Books and Reviews Click Here

The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man, by Jonas Jonasson

“The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man”, by Jonas Jonasson, is a sequel that is even funnier the original book, “The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.” It helps to have read the first book because the humor registers with you right off.

Allan and Julius are living on Bali, surviving by using a bag of money from the original book, but they have run out and owe the resort where they have been staying at a lot of money.  They have chartered a ride in a hot air balloon, have three bottles of champagne and are waiting for the crew, when the balloon takes off without the crew.  After some spectacular views the balloon runs out of fuel and they are floating in a basket in the ocean when they are rescued by a ship returning to North Korea. The captain of the ship doesn’t know whether to toss them overboard or give them his assistants cabin to stay in, but he winds up taking them to North Korea.

The captain has a suitcase with nine pounds of enriched uranium that they picked up in Africa and are taking it to be used in the nuclear weapons program for Kim Jong-un. Allan and Julius wind up face to face with Kim Jong-un.

The trip turns into an international crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump.

The events and of course our 101-year-old hero, Allan, are entertaining and funny. An enjoyable book.

See Review of the original “The 100 Year Old Man Click Here