The Anatomy of a Summer Reading Club (#111)

What makes something worthy of warm weather reading? Plus: Nerdy summer reads!

This past Tuesday night was my book club’s penultimate (“last-but-one”) meeting before we break for the summer. The avid readers we all are, we decided that we should come up with a “summer read” for us to enjoy and give us discussion material for our return in September. Which begged the question:

What makes a “summer” read?

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On the west side of Saint John sits a mall - a small, one-level, dog-leg structure that boasts an endless conveyor belt of retail except for three fixtures:

1. A branch of the Bank of Montreal, one of the “Big Five” in Canada.

2. Northern Reflections, a frozen-in-time L.L. Bean-esque women’s clothing store that peddles plaids with matching coloured denims, puffy quilted vests, and an array of T-shirts and sweatshirts featuring various Canadian fauna (especially waterfowl, e.g., loons).

3. The Saint John West Branch Library.

While #1 and #2 remain frozen in amber at the same locations in the mall since the late 1980s, the library is no longer buried in the back corner. Rather, it has pride of place as the first storefront to greet patrons at the main entrance.

Growing up on the west side of town, I would regularly visit this library with my mom and sister. And while we frequented the stacks throughout the year, we spent considerable time there during the summer months, when they hosted the annual “Summer Reading Club”, a themed program to encourage reading over the months of June, July, and August. Each year, we would register and receive our printed logbooks, where we would declare the number of books we planned to read over the eight weeks, and then record each one, receiving a stamp for every five books read.

This may surprise you, but I loved it.¹ I wish I kept the logbooks or remembered more of the books I read.

Three books I remember: Looking at the Moon by Kit Pearson; David and Della by Paul Zindel; This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall by Gordon Korman.

Yet, what made any of these books “summer reads”? Back then, it became a summer read by virtue of being read and recorded in the logbook during those sweltering months. There was no thought about seeking out light-hearted fare or fun stories or mindless narratives. Sometimes they were light-hearted or fun or mindless, but it wasn’t a requirement.

As an adult, though, it seems to be a category of literature² unto its’ own:

“…summer reads somehow feel more luxurious and languid. We go for books that are a little easier, a little more fun, that carry us along on a current of good pacing and captivating characters. The covers are bright and alluring, invoking mystery, escape, romance.”
Summer Reads, Summer Feels (2021)

Why does it need to be easier? Is it the heat - the increasingly hot days making any real attempt at cognitive processing a doomed effort? Is it the fear that sunscreen or sand will mar the pages of a more treasured work? And why is good pacing required for those humid days and not the bitterly cold ones that seem interminable here in the Great White North?

I don’t buy it - and neither do others, who would argue that summer is actually the perfect time to dive into Dostoevsky:

“The other side of the coin, though, is that during the long, relaxing days (or evenings, if you’re unfortunate enough to have a day job) of summer, what better time to tackle all the stuff you’ve finally been meaning to read your whole life? …the notion of reading intellectually stimulating novels in cafés and parks on warm afternoons sounds terrific…”
Greg Zimmerman, What is a Summer Read? (2012)

Maybe what makes summer reading “summery” is not the weight of the subject matter. I’m not reading Harold Robbins³ to further my career or personal development (nor do I usually read for those purposes; 75% of the time, it’s purely entertainment). Perhaps summer, being synonymous with many folks’ vacation/time off, means some folks feel that they can relax their own personal restrictions and read whatever they want. And being someone without those restrictions, I’m perplexed at the categorization; to me, it was - and still is - a simple equation for finding a summer read:

• Do I want to read it?

• Is it June, July, or August?

While I’m not sure what our book club will select for our summer read, I do know I’ll want to log more books than just that one, so...

What should I read this summer? And what do you think about the notion of a “summer read”? Let me know in the comments below.

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This Week in SciArt

I searched for any scientific discussion on what makes a book a “summer read” and have so far come up empty-handed. However, if you want to create a proper summer reading list for the nerd within…

• MIT Press recommends an array of science fiction, speculative fiction, and graphic novels, including two titles by Stanislaw Lem.

• The Royal Canadian Institute for Science created a suitable reading club for the throes of the pandemic, including such topics as the science of celebrity, the discovery of insulin, and a feminist, evidence-based look at women’s health.

• The Science Friday Initiative asked two of its’ science writers to produce a summer reading list; suggestions include speculative fiction titles as well as non-fiction forays into the worlds of deep sea creatures, abortion doulas, and…butts?

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1. And also being competitive, there was no way I wasn’t getting my stamps after every fifth book written in the log book they provided.

2. This is where I was going to crack a joke along the lines of, “Although what part of the Dewey decimal system represents “summer read”, I’ve yet to find out…” Then I did a quick check and realized that Dewey decimal doesn’t catalogue fiction - only knowledge - thus, saving myself much face with the librarians amongst you.

3. I feel like Harold Robbins is one of those authors from a bygone era - the era being suburban 90s mom wants to read something more scandalous than the daytime soaps (and forgets to put it away, so their teenage daughter finds it and learns a great many things about anatomy and interpersonal relationships).