Briefly | It’s been a bit of a rough week. A couple of really wonderful people in our community passed away after long struggles with cancer, and although I didn’t know them well I know they are going to be missed by many, many people.

Time and Place | Just before 7:30 a.m. on my parents’ couch.

Reading | My reading this week has been pretty sporadic, which is too bad because I have two deadlines — one freelance (Palimpsest by Matthew Battles) and one book tour (Smash Cut by Brad Gooch) — coming up this week. I’ve been trying hard to space out obligation reads, but these two bumped together and I’m struggling a little bit to get motivated. When I wasn’t reading either of those, I’ve been making my way through Meet Me in Atlantis by Mark Adams (started funny, but is starting to lose me around page 100). I’m probably going to switch it up and grab what I really want to be reading — Leaving Orbit by Margaret Lazarus Dean, a new nonfiction title from Graywolf Press about the end of the American shuttle program. So many books, so little time.

Watching | I needed a new half-hour comedy to watch, so I decided to start Friends (available on Netflix). I was too young for the show when it debuted and didn’t really start watching when I aged in, so I’m coming at it as a newbie. So far, it’s fun.

Watching II | This time-lapse video of summer in Minnesota freelance photographer Chad Halvorson is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. This is why Minnesotans put up with the our insane winters.

Blogging | This week I shared my March 2015 reading wrap up and took a look at how I’m going on my 2015 reading goals, and reposted a Book Riot piece on nonfiction to read if you loved Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Promoting | Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon is coming up this month (April 25)! At this point, my schedule is clear for that weekend… and I’m going to work hard to keep it that way.

Hating | Over margaritas on Thursday night, a friend told me she’d been battling a feeling of ennui — “a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest” — most of the week. I’m starting to think ennui is contagious and I caught it from her. I need something to kick start a cheerful attitude.

Eating | The boyfriend found these weird puffy Cheez-Its when we stopped for snacks yesterday. It’s like eating a Cheeto, but it tastes like a Cheez-It. So weird!

Exercising | I did pretty well with my walk/exercise goal in March, until the final week of the month. But so far I’ve only missed 15 days days this year, which isn’t too shabby.

Anticipating | In a few hours we’ll be heading over to my Grandma’s apartment for Easter lunch. I’m excited to spend some time with my family with food, games and laughter — that should be a good ennui buster.

This post originally appeared at Book Riot. 

If you have not picked up Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, stop what you’re doing and get it right now. This book is fantastic. Americanah is the story of Ifemelu and Obinze, two Nigerians who are “young and in love.” When they try to leave Nigeria together, complicated immigration laws find them separated. Ifemelu makes a life for herself in the United States, while Obinze joins the underground economy in England. The book follows their lives as they find their way back together.

While that description makes this book sound like love story, it’s so much more than that. Adiche has written a book that is incredibly smart about race and family and how we are always affected by the places we come from. Her commentary on race in contemporary America is uncomfortably accurate and gave me so much to think about.

One of the (many) things I loved about Americanah is the way Adichie was able to reflect a range of black experiences through Ifemelu, Obinze, and the other characters they meet as their lives slowly move back together. In that spirit, I want to pair this book with two others that also reflect a range of lived experiences and how our lives are impacted knowingly and unconsciously by our race. Minor spoilers ahead if you haven’t read Americanah (but nothing that I think will ruin the book if you haven’t picked it up yet).

In Americanah, Ifemelu finds her voice in America through a blog she authors anonymously, originally called “Raceteenth or Curious Observations by a Non American Black on the Subject of Blackness in America.” Adiche peppers the book with excerpts from this fictional blog, which comments on everything from Michelle Obama and black women’s hair to academia’s take on being poor and white versus poor and black. I felt like I could have read an entire book of these blog posts.

A book I just recently found, How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston, is pretty darn close to filling this gap. Thurston is a comedian and writer who worked as the director of digital for The Onion before moving on to found Cultivated Wit, where he continues to mix digital culture and humor. The book is a mix of memoir and personal essays focused on “the ideas of blackness, how those ideas are changing, and how they differ from the popular ideas promoted in mainstream media and often in the black community itself.”

In addition to writing about his childhood and coming of age as the son of a “pro-black, Pan-African single mother” in Washington D.C., Thurston also invites other writers and thinkers to contribute to the book as part of “The Black Panel,” bringing other voices to the discussion of contemporary blackness. The essays are funny, uncomfortable, and curious about a range of issues. I think Ifemelu would have made a great addition to the voices in this book.

In addition to exploring issues of race and identity in the United States, Americanah also tries to understand what it means to leave and come back to the country you were born in. Both Ifemelu and Obinze leave Nigeria – Ifemelu legally to the United States, Obinze illegally to England – and eventually come back. As Nigerians who left the country, they have a different experience when they return home, further separating them along particular lines of race and identity.

Noo Saro-Wiwa could, I think, relate to some of these feelings of being both an insider and an outsider in your country of origin. Saro-Wiwa was born in Nigeria, but spent most of her childhood in England, returning to Nigeria (reluctantly) in the summers with her parents. After her father, environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was executed by a military dictator in 1995, the family fled the country.

In her travel memoir Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria, Saro-Wiwa returns to Nigeria to both explore her connection to her country and show others what it’s like to travel around a country mired in corruption and challenged by both deep religious and racial divides.

Saro-Wiwa’s observations about life in Nigeria are sharp and often funny, but there’s also a deep frustration that runs through her writing. At times the book starts to feel like a piece of magazine travel writing, full of disengaged hotel staff and incompetent waiters, but in most respects it’s a very clear look at historical and contemporary challenges in Nigeria. After reading it, I felt like I had a much clearer understanding of the world Ifemelu and Obinze wanted to flee, as well as the beauty of the country they hoped to return too.

To be honest, though, I had a hard time coming up with a list of memoirs by authors from Nigeria. I would love to hear some of your other suggestions for books – fiction or nonfiction – on Nigeria, in the comments.

Hooray hooray, March is over. I can’t even tell you how happy that makes me. And Minnesota even escaped March with only a couple days of significant snowfall. Not too shabby, spring. Now that I’ve said this, we’ll probably get three feet of snow in April and not see ground again until May… oops.

Anyway, my reading this month wasn’t too bad either — good variety, and a lot of books that I’ve been recommending to other readers. Here’s what I picked up:

1. Pilon, Mary: The Monopolists (nonfiction)
2. Thurston, Baratunde: How to Be Black (memoir)
3. van den Berg, Laura: Find Me (fiction)
4. Kwan, Kevin: Crazy Rich Asians (fiction)
5. Bissonnette, Zac: The Great Beanie Baby Bubble (nonfiction)
6. Moore, Erin: That’s Not English (nonfiction)
7. Hadfield, Chris: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth (memoir)
8. Suma, Nova Ren: The Walls Around Us (YA fiction)

Despite getting a slow start to the month, I found a reading groove over the last couple of weeks and finished up some excellent books. The Great Beanie Baby Bubble will probably make it into my favorite books of the year, and both Crazy Rich Asians and The Walls Around Us were fun fiction picks that are a little outside the box for me. And I’m pretty sure that An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth is going to start me on a rabbit hole of books about space… look for those soon!

Quarterly Goals Review

Since we just finished the first three months of 2015, I thought this would be a good time to quickly review the goals I set for my reading in 2015.

My first goal was to complete the 2015 TBR Pile Challenge, organized by Adam at Roof Beam Reader. Of the 14 books on my list (12 choices, plus two alternates) I’ve read… two books (Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and An Astronaut’s Guide to Love on Earth by Col. Chris Hadfield)! This puts me a little behind, but not so far behind that I couldn’t still finish this one. Exciting!

My second goal was for 25 percent of the books I read to be written by authors of color. Of the 26 books I’ve finished this year, 15 were by white authors, eight were by authors of color and three were “other” (primarily comics, which I consider collaborative projects). That’s about 30 percent for diverse authors — not too shabby!

I also said I wanted to get my entire book collection cataloged in LibraryThing. I’ve made absolutely attempt to start that one, but there’s still plenty of time left in 2015 — making progress on two of my three goals is good enough for me.

How has your reading been in the first three months of 2015? What’s you favorite book so far this year?

Time and Place | Just after 10 a.m. sitting on my couch. We had friends over last night and ended up hanging out with them until far past my bed time… it’s been a slow morning.

Reading | It’s been a good week of reading! I spent most of the week reading That’s Not English by Erin Moore, a book looking at differences in language and culture in the United States and England. I liked it a lot. After that, I picked up An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Col. Chris Hadfield, a memoir by a retired Canadian astronaut who most recently served on the International Space Station. It was also really delightful. At the moment, I’m finishing up a young adult novel, The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma, all about ballerinas and prisoners. It’s a little paranormal and creepy, but also great.

Not Reading | Last week, I mentioned that I started Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte, but reading it was making me feel anxious. A couple of people asked about that in the comments, so I thought I’d elaborate. One of my “genre kryptonites” is books about time management, especially motherhood and time management. I don’t have kids, but reading about it is one of the ways I’m helping myself think about whether I want kids or not. The first few chapters of Overwhelmed were filled with these rushed stories about mothers running late and working constantly and ferrying kids around that made me want to bury my head in the sand… so I returned it to the library.

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