10.9 Spring break! Time for . . .

Are you feeling a bit ragged around the edges? Not sure whether you should reach for your down jacket or your raincoat? You're probably looking forward to spring break! Whether you're headed up the highway to visit grandparents or dusting off your passport for a trip to warmer climes, here's something you shouldn't forget to pack.

Athena Advises

That's right: reading material. I don't mean your textbooks: you're the best judge of what you need to do for school and how to organize that. I'm talking about reading for fun. Reading for amusement. Reading for amazement.You don't need to load up on five-pound bricks of books. Download the free Kindle application from amazon, and you can read digitally-formatted books on your laptop, iPad or even your phone. Kindle books are usually less expensive than paper books, and many are free.I'm a big fan of audio books. They're especially useful when I'm traveling, whether that's across town, across continents or even when I'm going nowhere on the treadmill!Just in case you think that reading is only something students do when their teachers force them, I've decided to keep you posted on what I'm reading.Have a Nice Day is a drama by Billy Crystal and Quinton Peeples. Your parents may remember Billy Crystal as a comedian on Saturday Night Live, where his signature punchline was, "It's better to look marvelous than to feel marvelous." Have a Nice Day is a modern-day retelling of Everyman, a medieval drama that tells the story of the time Death came to fetch someone, and was persuaded to wait just one day. What would you do, and how might you learn about what's important, if you knew your life would end at midnight?Another Brooklyn is a novel by Jacqueline Woodson. I grew up in yet another Brooklyn, and admire Woodson's ability to make us see what might be dismissed as a drug-infested nightmare through the bright eyes of a girl whose father brought his children up from the South, converted to the Elijah Muhammed's Nation of Islam, and tried to keep his family safe against great odds. Girlfriends are the key to the narrator's survival, and we follow a foursome as they grow up in unexpected ways.The Only Woman in the Room, by Marie Benedict, is the story of a young actress in Vienna who finds herself married to an arms dealer who sells to both sides in the Second World War. She runs away to Hollywood, where she becomes not only a major film star, but the inventor of a key component of--your cell phone! Yes, it's the biography of--I won't spoil it for you.If you prefer business, you might like a book I just started: Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the world with OKRs. The author, John Doerr, is the man who funded the startup you now know as Google.What do you care about? Well, if you care about it, why not learn about it?Dr. Marlena CorcoranFounder and CEOAuthor of Year by Year to College, on amazon.com, amazon.de and many national amazon sites