What I'm Reading, Spring Break Edition

Since I last did a Monday Update, I have finished teaching winter quarter. Teaching reminds me of running a half marathon – my legs feel like they are going to give out at the end, and I’m moving on sheer will alone.

But now there are just papers to grade, and then SPRING BREAK! I know that there was a time when spring break meant a party on a beach. Now it means reading for fun in my overstuffed chair (with champagne).

Reading for fun, people! I can’t tell you how excited I am.

Recently, I have posted reviews for Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott, Yes Please by Amy Poehler, and A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler. I am almost done with When the World Was Steady by Claire Messud, so look for a review of that one some time this week.

Looking ahead, I have a small stack of books and a celebratory beverage waiting for me:

I’ll be reading That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott for my book club. One of our members is here for a year from Australia, and she chose this one. Here’s the description from Powells:

Set in Western Australia in the first decades of the nineteenth century, That Deadman Dance is a vast, gorgeous novel about the first contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the new European settlers.
Bobby Wabalanginy is a young Noongar man, smart, resourceful, and eager to please. He befriends the European arrivals, joining them as they hunt whales, till the land, and establish their new colony. He is welcomed into a prosperous white family, and eventually finds himself falling in love with the daughter, Christine. But slowly-by design and by hazard-things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is progressing. Livestock mysteriously start to disappear, crops are destroyed, there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever-stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind, and Bobby is forced to take sides, inexorably drawn into a series of events that will forever change the future of his country.

I also hope to tackle Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey. There has been a lot of buzz about this book. Here’s the description on Goodreads:

In this darkly riveting debut novel—a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also a heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging—an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences.

I am also excited to receive in the mail my copy of Hover by Seattle poet Erin Malone. Erin has agreed to do an interview here at The Leaning Stack of Books, so get ready for an upcoming discussion about writing and reading. 

Here’s the description on Goodreads:

In Hover, a new mother struggles to overcome fear and anxiety. Her son’s birth unexpectedly summons feelings of helplessness, grief, anger, and guilt, and we learn that the death of her brother in childhood is a loss that crashes once again into her present life. Shaken, unsure of her new identity and wrestling with old fears, she slowly makes her way through this tangle of emotions towards some hope of repair and redemption.

Have a great reading week!

(It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Book Journey)