“Summer reading” is one of the most evocative phrases I know, bringing to mind long hours spent in a lounge chair on a deep, shaded front porch, a glass of iced tea nearby, and a tower of books, books, books, all waiting to be read. The porch might be traded for a beach or a lakeside, and iced tea isn’t required, although it is a refreshing beverage on a long, lazy summer day, but the one thing that’s non-negotiable in the summer reading scenario is the tower of books.
I read year-round, but I don’t have the kind of life that enables me to set aside an entire season for reading. We never hear about winter reading or spring reading or fall reading. Why summer reading?
The fantasy about summer seems to be that the whole world has time off and life slows down. We establish a beachhead in a rental cottage, and other members of the family join us for long weekends. Who does this, and more importantly, why am I not doing it?
Perhaps the idea of summers being nothing but time stretching in front of us, as shiny as sunlight on the water, dates back to our school days. I devoured books even when I was a kid (hey, a kid who reads becomes an adult who reads, so, parents, turn your kids on to books now). In that sense, I was a summer reader, but I doubt 12-year-old me was the publishing industry’s target audience for beach books. The last time I had a whole, glorious summer off was 1982. It fell between graduation from college and my first full-time job. And, yes, there was reading. Lots of reading. There was travel. There was even, on occasion, a beach. That’s the last time I was able to indulge in full-tilt summer reading.
But summer reading can’t be targeted only at college graduates who are on their last summer break ever. And even though teachers appear to have a lot of time off, I doubt a lot of them are the summer readers the publishing industry has in mind. Like me, they’re year-round readers, but summer readers? Teachers are so poorly paid that many of them work during the summer, too.
I come from a family of teachers and made a deliberate choice not to be a teacher. I remember my high school principal once saying to my mother, in reference to me, “We’ll make a teacher out of her.” I can still hear the horror in my voice as I replied, “No, you won't.” Anyone who goes into teaching should be a kid person, and I’m not, in exactly the same way that some people aren’t cat or dog people. They’d never harm a cat or a dog, and they might look at yours and say, “What a cute critter,” but they don’t want one of their own, and they don’t want to spend seven hours a day shut up in a room with them. That’s how I feel about kids. They are cute critters toward whose education I am delighted to pay my tax dollars, but I never wanted to be in a classroom full of them.
Besides, I decided when I was a kid myself that I was going to be a writer.
And I am, which means that in addition to spending early morning, late evening, and weekend hours working at my computer, I also have a day job, which is not conducive to lolling about on a lounge chair for three months gorging on books.
So who are the summer readers? Who buys the so-called beach books? Who reads them at the beach? Was one summer 31 years ago my final fling with summer reading, fondly remembered and never to be repeated?
It was nice while it lasted, but a fling, while temporarily satisfying, can’t touch the committed relationship I have with books. I’m into reading for the long haul. In the winter, I love to read while curled up on the sofa, glancing occasionally at the window to see the snow falling. In the spring, sometimes the wind dies down long enough for me to sit outside with a book, but springtime in the Rockies can be a bitch; fortunately, books are portable. In the fall, as the nights turn cool and the first hint of woodsmoke is in the air, reading takes on a cozy, nesting aspect; I don’t require a beach or even that deep, shaded front porch, because no matter where I am, and regardless of the season, within the pages of a book, I’m home.