Becoming by Michelle Obama
Published 2018 · 520 pages · 86,838 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Biography, Memoir & Autobiography, Nonfiction
How hard is Becoming to read?
Becoming scores 25 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- Warm, accessible prose. Obama writes in a conversational register that invites intimacy.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- Clear, well-organized sentences. The prose is polished but conversational, never academic.
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Political and social themes emerge through personal narrative rather than abstract argument.
- Information density: 40 out of 100
- Covers decades of a rich life with selective detail. Not dense in the academic sense but packed with narrative.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Chronological memoir with a three-part structure. Direct and clearly organized.
- Symbolic density: 20 out of 100
- Concrete storytelling with minimal symbolic apparatus.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Obama writes with sincerity and warmth. The humor is gentle, not ironic.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- The memoir reaches a satisfying conclusion while acknowledging that the 'becoming' is ongoing.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Three-part chronological structure. Conventional memoir organization.
How Becoming is regarded
Becoming holds a literary regard score of 45 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.