[수필_원서] 단 하루도 위대하지 않는 날은 없었다
A Promised Land 독후감
It is rich in detail, with beatutiful descriptions of old memories about a childhood on grandma's knee and holidays with his wife and daughters. It is more focused on political than personal, but it is with a beauty close to nostalgia when he describes about his famaily. He tells us that personal success is not a matter of background, intelligence or native ability. Of course, it cannot define or determine what is the "successful life". It has different meanings to every single person. Someone could say "Travelling aroud the world" or "Having 100,000 subscriber on YouTube channel", or "Becoming a fine parent.". Yet, the first step of becoming more successful is being happy and having positive thought. List all the happy thoughts you can think of. Probably, It is difficult to fill out on a piece of paper. Whether or not, it sprinkled with many memories of happienss, regret, advice and even his dry sense of humor. It can surely see 'one politician's book' but also see 'just someone's book that knows how to see the positive ways'.
Self-knowledge makes us independent of the opinions of others. He knows himself well. therefore, He is independent of the opinions of others. No different. Everyone has their own political views. It sounds a bit of a stretch. Someone might not like his political attitude. however, as a book the story is fine, do not see how the author's politics matter. His focus is more political side, it nearly pleasurable to read and the prose gorgeous in places, the detail vivid and granular, sentence by sentence. He is a gifted writher. If not, we could not have met this kind of literature. Better or not, Obama spends much of his memoir to explain himself and his decisions in office. For 800 pages, he mentions "I told you so". He uses a lot of time for explaining that went wrong as if he alreadly knew a time would come when he would disappoint. Reader can fine a few mocking paragraphs about Trump in the 800 pages which comprise the first half of two volumes of recollections of an extraordinary presidency.
I listened to the audio version, read by Obama in his expressive and stylish voice. Naturally, I barely understand the whole meaning of this story to read. There is a 28- hours audiobook edition that is read by Obama himself in Korean AudioBook's page called "NaverAudioBook". It is 28~29 hours long, so "Reading" this via audio book would be better for non-native English speakers. I won't go into details of the contents of this book here. I should read this on Korean version again. After that, I will review all the detail of the contents of this. I expected to fine nothing much would come as new informations, but I could feel a much deeper insight into Obama's terms as well as his responsibilities of a president of the United States of America and his personal life and thoughts. It also calls attentions to how fragile our democracy is and how easily it can be derailed. I do not understand anything about politics especially American's but, I do understand what is admirable about the work of one man who understands self-knowlege.
