“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” – Harper Lee
The Deep Thought of the Week
It’s official: winter is out and summer is (almost) in. Cue the eternal comparisons about how [xyz] city is just “the best” in the summer. The leading contenders in these discussions are usually the places where January both looks and feels like a nuclear winter, so it’s a low bar to clear. In any case, May is when we say farewell to cosy evenings reading by the fire, and hello to beach reads!
Necessarily, this is going to have a knock on effect on our reading choices. Is Dostoevsky a summer author? (No). Is Zadie Smith a summer author? (Yes, probably). Personally, I appreciate the workout of lugging a voluminous tome to the beach, but I realise others might prefer novellas (novellae?) to give them a sense of a productive literary season. There’s nothing like bringing a book with you everywhere you go in those baking summer months, watching it expand and warp as it spends time outside. It’s almost as if the book is ageing while you’re reading it.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Lit With Charles to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.