Beach Reads

What are you reading this summer? Have you picked up the latest novel with the word girl in its title, or are you re-reading Pride and Prejudice? And when people ask what you are reading, do you ever feeling like apologizing if you are perusing a mass market paperback picked up at an airport? Why are beach reads any different from other reads, or are they?

I sometimes do read the latest page turners in July and August. But I more often read the books I don’t make time for during the rest of the year – the five hundred page novels that only get read if I sit in a sand chair under an umbrella and read fifty pages at one go. And then continue to be read after a swim, when I return to my circle of shade and read another fifty pages.

This is the way all books should be read, I think – rather than ten pages at a time as I lie in bed on a Tuesday night fighting sleep. I like reading in front of a fireplace fire in the winter. But again, this is in the evening. It is during the summer that I make time to read during the day. Is this the difference?

I just finished The Art of Fielding. My three sons and my husband have all read the book and have been bugging me to read it. A book about baseball, I asked? Hmmm….maybe next summer. And I’m really glad I did wait until summer because I was able to devote large blocks of time to it, and because it’s not only about baseball; it’s also about ambition, trust, love, despair, loyalty, risk, helplessness, and hope.

So, read The Art of Fielding. And then read whatever else you feel like reading. Because summertime is custom made for settling into a quiet, cool place for hours at a time to leave your troubles behind and immerse yourself, very pleasantly, into someone else’s.