Coach Michelle’s 2025 Spring Reading List

By Coach Michelle,

Spring is a great time to get your stack of books, find a quiet, sunny spot & read & read & read!  There’s nothing like sitting on the newly green grass & feeling the warm sun in your face.  Well, nothing like doing those things with a great book!!  And so it’s time once again to throw out a few book ideas…should you need one.  Behold, Coach Michelle’s 2025 Spring Reading List.  Take a read & let me know your fav!

#1 – Learn Faster, Perform Better:  A Musician’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing, Molly Gebrian

Even if you don’t play an instrument, I promise you’ll find this book fascinating!  Gebrian is both a professional violist as well as a cognitive neuroscientist – quite a combination!  In this book, she delves into the latest research on how the brain learns new information, retains this new information both short- and long-term & how to recall this information in high-pressure situations.  Most helpfully, she exposes the common ways in which we THINK that we’re efficiently learning only to be frustrated by inconsistencies in performance.  As both a musician AND a coach, Gebrian’s practical applications have been invaluable additions to my toolbox!

#2 – The World That We Knew, Alice Hoffman

I’m a sucker for a good historical fiction novel…and this Alice Hoffman book totally fit the bill!  Set in 1941 a Jewish mother sends her 12-yr old daughter away in order to save her from the Nazi regime.  In her maternal attempts to protect her child as much as possible, she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a golem, who is sworn to protect her daughter.  This is a fabulous story of eternal love & unspeakable loss.  I literally could not put this book down.

#3 – Peak:  Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, Anders Ericcson & Robert Pool

Seems I’m into books about learning these days!  Here’s another interesting book discussing the latest science on how to get better at anything.  While popular thought often lauds innate talent and/or the “10,000 hours of practice” concept, Ericsson & Pool offer up a different path to improvement.  Be it in sports, music, academics and/or work, the “deliberate practice” learning strategy can be a more powerful & efficient way to reach your performance goals.  

#4 – Braiding Sweetgrass:  Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer

This book came to me in two different recommendations.  Firstly, my college-age daughter (who read an excerpt from it in one of her classes) recommended it.  And secondly, it was referenced in the fascinating & mind-blowing book, The Light Eaters (click here to read my summary).  Kimmerer, a botanist & a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, blends her two backgrounds together to demonstrate how we humans are an integral part of, not separate from, nature.  Furthermore, the more we choose to listen & learn from our natural world, the more fulfilling, appreciative & generous our own existence can be.  Great book.  I highly recommend it.

To see all of my reading lists, check out:

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