They are everywhere: the CBC Books 2015 summer reading list, GoodReads’ Popular Summer Book Shelf… There even seems to be some special categories like “beach reads”! But what are summer reads? What makes a book a good fit for holidays? Do “summer reads” even exist?
The 90’s or the art of packing books
When I was a teenager, there were no eReaders, no tablets, no smartphones, no WiFi all over the place, and no, I’m no dinosaur: it was the 90’s. At the time, in my case, summer holidays meant a one month stay in a small sea-side town in Normandy near my grand-parents’. There were great seafood, horses and cows, hiking trails, all kinds of things, but no public library and no decent book store.
As a result, I was planning my summer book list as carefully as a rocket launch to the Moon. For the sake of easy transportation, it had to be as light as possible but still be able to hold for a month. Yep, pretty much an unsolvable equation.
So back then, “summer reads” mostly meant “thick mass paperbacks”, whatever the content: this is when I read 1000+ page-long Gone With The Wind for instance.
School years summer syndrome: read *useful*
At school, I was strongly encouraged to read classics, and especially books that would give me an edge in my academic studies. Stephen King didn’t really match the French curriculum: 19th-20th century French authors were more like it. So I read plenty of books by Honoré de Balzac, Émile Zola, Maupassant, Prosper Mérimée, Théophile Gaultier and so on.
The urge to “read useful” was strong. I remember being once stuck with no book (oOoh the pain!), so when we went to the supermarket, I checked their small bookshelf. I picked L’Araigne by Henri Troyat, for the unique reason that the book got the prestigious French Goncourt award in 1938. This is how I discovered my favourite author ever: by choosing a “quotable” book. I know. Lame.
Nowadays, summer is business reading as usual
But now? Well, I don’t need to pack for one full month holidays anymore (I wish…). Anyway, with an eReader and even the worst Internet connection, I can get something to read from anywhere at any time. I also don’t read books in the hope of showing off in my essays at school (never quite paid off, anyway). So… what?
Summer isn’t a special reading season anymore. I just keep reading what I enjoy the rest of the year. I don’t feel the urge to read anything different, or lighter, or more serious, just because I could read and get sunburnt at the same time (which I don’t). “Summer reads” doesn’t mean much to me.
What about you? Do you have special summer reading list?
I feel the same way as you – my summer reading just consists of whatever is next on my list. Summer doesn’t change what I want to read, but sometimes it changes how much I read or where it happens. 🙂
I think it has changed, summer by summer, for me, in terms of focus, but with elements of all the kinds of things yuo’ve described. Although when packing to be elsewhere, I tended towards re-reading, because if the number of books that I could take with me was limiited, I wanted to be SURE that they’d be “good ones”.
Sometimes it’s completely contradictory too, so in the summer I will think “perfect time for mysteries” (i.e. sitting outside with a glass of lemonade and my feet propped up on the railing) and then, in the winter, I think “perfect time for mysteries” (i.e. with a cup of hot coffee and my feet tucked up inside the afghan). Shrug. We can always find excuses for reading, right? 🙂
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I’ve been thinking about this recently and I do think I tend to read “lighter reads” in the summer. I think this stems from being an English major and remembering how much I used to want to read non-classics in the summers, but then deciding to stick with them so I could have a leg up in the fall. Now I associate summer reading with “fun reads” and fall reading with “serious reads,” which is why I’ve finally started reading the literary fiction that I’ve put aside these past few months 😉
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