Book #38: Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Title: Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Author: Barack Obama

We're about halfway into the year now, and I'm stuck on book #38. I can't remember if this is the third or fourth year I've blogged my books for what started out as a "Fifty Book Challenge" but I'm pretty sure that I've read more than 38 by July 1st. This year the move (and all those hours spent drooling over the This American Life DVDs) have set me back more than I'd like. A decent reading pace is 1.5 books per week, 2 on a good week. It took me three weeks to read Dreams from My Father.

When it takes me a really long time to finish a book, I generally think it must be because the book was bad and didn't really grasp my attention. And it's true that every time I opened Dreams from My Father, I was asleep before finishing a paragraph. But I tend to think that had more to do with the fact that while I was reading it, I was spending my days unpacking boxes, buying all the stuff you need but don't want to buy when you buy a new house, calming my kids' fears about the move, and waiting interminably for repair men to show up and fix wiring and televisions and air conditioners.

So while the book is called Dreams from My Father, it sort of feels like a dream to me too, probably because I was half asleep when I read most of it. It's a memoir from Barack Obama's childhood up to the time when he started law school at Harvard (when he was in his late twenties, I'd guess), and seems to be his attempt to synthesize his heritage as the child of a white American mother and an African father and trying to find his place as an African American. Once again, I'm impressed by his intelligence and his grace as a writer. It's so honest, in fact, that sometimes it made me squirm a little bit, wondering if I knew more about our commander in chief than he wished, in retrospect that he'd shared. It's definitely worth reading, and will add to any reader's knowledge about our president and how where and who he came from shaped the man he is today. I'd just recommend not reading it during a cross-country move.