It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

I have possibly the weirdest hodgepodge of books going right now. We just finished up the big standardized test at my school last week (not that it is the only test...there are many). I was a testing administrator. That means that for four hours a day, three days in a row, I was chained to those tests like a super spy in a James Bond thriller. I mean, I had to take the testing materials basket into the restroom with me. I kid you not. And for the three days, during the testing, I was not allowed to:
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• Talk
• Read
• Grade papers
• Use my computer
• Have my phone on
• Write

It's actually excruciating.

Thank goodness I have a daily meditation practice! Otherwise, I don't know how I would have done it.

So now that that's over, and I can have my brain back. It's Monday, and Sheila over at Book Journey has this fun meme. So here's what I'm reading.

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• Started this a while ago: Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White by Lila Montero Weaver. A memoir, with beautiful black and white drawings, about the author's experience as a Latina immigrant in Alabama at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.
•  Just finished reading Incendiary Girls--review coming tomorrow. An excellent debut collection of stories by Kodi Scheer.
• The True Secret of Writing by Natalie Goldberg. About meditation practice, silence, and writing. I'm loving this, even if I only get to read it in sips....
• Trans Atlantic, which I have had for nearly a year. It is beautiful.
• Finally, a student put Kwame Alexander's He Said, She Said in my hands and insisted I read it. So, okay.... turnabout's fair play!

I'm also trying to work in Hard Times by Charles Dickens (it really seems to fit in with my experiences with standardized testing). And Mind of Winter by Laura Kasischke is next up for review.

It's Monday! What are you reading?