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(By Richard Davies) I’m listening to Michelle Obama read her audio book to me on my Audible app. I’m on my own with my headphones and so is she.
I picture the former First Lady sitting upright and calm, with good posture, in a small sound-proofed recording booth with a cool glass of water by her side, alone with her thoughts and carefully chosen words, as she tells a 19-hour-long story that lifts a curtain on her utterly remarkable life.
What a quiet contrast to that night in 2016 when she rocked the hall and wowed the crowd as she gave her electrifying speech to the Democratic National Convention.
During a 16-minute address, Michelle Obama’s short, clear sentences and confident but never cocky manner impressed the nation. She won a jump-off-your-seat standing ovation from the crowd.
It’s no surprise that in a Gallup Poll, released last week, she was named the woman Americans admire most.
Her critically acclaimed memoir, released in mid-November, is a smash hit, selling more than two million copies in the first 15 days after its release. Becoming is the #1-selling book of 2018.
Sentence-by-sentence the story reveals much about her upbringing in “a family of strivers” in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Shore. For middle-class white readers like myself, the book is a revealing, fascinating, and also humbling glimpse at her family background.
“One of the great gifts of Obama’s book is her loving and frank bearing-witness to the lived experiences of the black working class, the invisible people who don’t make the evening news and whom not enough of us choose to see,” wrote journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson in her powerful review of Becoming.
“She recreates the dailiness of African-American life — the grass-mowing, bid-whist-playing, double-Dutch-jumping, choir-practicing, waiting-on-the-bus, and clock-punching of the ordinary black people who surrounded her growing up.”
The audio version of the book has the added bonus of Ms. Obama’s voice. Unlike many book authors, who use vocal professionals to do true justice to their words, Ms. Obama reads well, with relaxed polish and warmth. We can hear the passion, precision, and humor in her voice.
But I wish that Becoming was also a podcast, because the curtain would have been lifted a lot higher on a life that many of us want to know a lot more about.
If pushed to choose between a finely crafted, well-edited audio book, and the spontaneity of an extended series of podcast interviews, I’d pick the latter.
They would have been even more revealing, more intimate, and perhaps more honest than the book. When a good interviewer asks questions, there are unplanned-for moments.
“Podcasting is the slow food movement of the media world,” says RadioPublic CEO, Jake Shapiro. “Our medium treats listeners with respect, gives publishers a direct relationship with audiences, and gives voice to new talent and communities long missing from the airwaves.”
Here’s hoping that in the new year to come book publishers and their best-selling authors will use in-depth podcasts to establish deeper, stronger, and ever more personal contacts with readers and listeners.
Best-selling books need podcast companions.
Richard Davies is the co-host of the weekly solutions news podcast, How Do We Fix It?and a podcast consultant and media coach at DaviesContent.com.