John Everett Branch Jr.
Why do people talk about “summer reading�? No one thinks of any other season of the year in this way: there’s no autumn, winter, or spring reading. (Northrop Frye employed the seasons in , but he didn’t propose reading by the calendar.) No one who has finished school, and not everyone who’s still in it, has extra time for reading during the summer; parents whose children are of school age may have less time in those months. The whole idea is, I think, largely an artifact from that period in our life when we did (if we grew up in America, anyway, for things are different elsewhere) have whole days free, or when, if we worked, at least we had no homework.
But it might be amusing to resort to fantasy in answering the question. Summer, then, is a dream of freedom and time, and summer reading would mean living in a book for hours on end; it would mean catching up on old desires as well as picking new things at leisure, as they struck my fancy. A visit to a bookstore now and then, to wander among the continent-shelves and island-displays� A few book readings or author discussions, to hear a writer’s second voice� A plunge into some hefty volumes in the stacks I have at home, such as The Tale of Genji, by Lady Murasaki, or The Novel: A Biography, by Michael Schmidt, or The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer� I’d read Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans; I’d escape into the novels in the Aubrey-Maturin series, by Patrick O’Brian, that I haven’t yet enjoyed; I’d get around to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and a few other books pertaining to Paris that are half hidden on a lower shelf. And William Gibson’s nonfiction collection, and Jorge Luis Borges’s essays on literature. Most of these are books that I already have. Who knows what I might think of, or hear about, or find in a shop? The sun would rise and loll about endlessly in the sky as I read. Each day would be long and full of adventure, and when I went to sleep at night I’d know that another one, very much like it or very different, would follow.
But it might be amusing to resort to fantasy in answering the question. Summer, then, is a dream of freedom and time, and summer reading would mean living in a book for hours on end; it would mean catching up on old desires as well as picking new things at leisure, as they struck my fancy. A visit to a bookstore now and then, to wander among the continent-shelves and island-displays� A few book readings or author discussions, to hear a writer’s second voice� A plunge into some hefty volumes in the stacks I have at home, such as The Tale of Genji, by Lady Murasaki, or The Novel: A Biography, by Michael Schmidt, or The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer� I’d read Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, by Jennifer Homans; I’d escape into the novels in the Aubrey-Maturin series, by Patrick O’Brian, that I haven’t yet enjoyed; I’d get around to Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and a few other books pertaining to Paris that are half hidden on a lower shelf. And William Gibson’s nonfiction collection, and Jorge Luis Borges’s essays on literature. Most of these are books that I already have. Who knows what I might think of, or hear about, or find in a shop? The sun would rise and loll about endlessly in the sky as I read. Each day would be long and full of adventure, and when I went to sleep at night I’d know that another one, very much like it or very different, would follow.
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