The Whining Stranger on Books and Reading

A Short List of Some of the All-Time Great Summer Reads



Memorial Day weekend is, of course, when North Americans have to start hearing ad nauseum about the summer movie season. This is when Hollywood first starts firing their big guns and trying to ply us with the supposed-to-be-big-hits-of-the-season. But let's talk about summer reading. With the temperatures rising, with longer days, also comes--hopefully--lots of lazy reading time. I've started the summer reading season this time around with Yann Martel's Life of Pi, so that I can at last relinquish my status as the-last-literate-adult-in-North-America-who-has-not-yet-read-Life-of-Pi.

But here are some memorable summer reads from my near and distant past:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. [read over multiple summers]

This, in my mind, is the ultimate summer read. It's short, it's emotionally gripping, it's beautifully written, and it takes place over one fateful summer in the mid-1920s. The past few years my partner and I have taken to reading it aloud with mint juleps around the Summer Solstice. (The idea started because we wanted a way to ensure that we--unlike Daisy Buchanan in the novel--wouldn't miss the longest day of the year.) We're a month off from revisiting this one together for the fourth year in a row, but I'm already keyed up. The novel, after all, does have the best last page of any novel I've ever read.

2. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon [read in summer 1991, age 17]

A coming-of-age novel that takes place during summer, Chabon's first novel is stylistically indebted to Fitzgerald and Salinger in its verbal dynamics and world-weary young characters. There are memorable characters; there are funny set pieces; there's even some sex. I remember reading this one over a couple days back in the summer following my first year of undergrad study, in the air conditioning, eating turkey sandwiches and with baseball on the radio in the background.

3. Ulysses by James Joyce [read in summer 2000, age 26]

In June of 2000, while deep in the writing of my PhD dissertation, I boldly proclaimed that I was going to make that year the Summer of Reading Famous Big Novels. I initally planned to do Ulysses and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow back to back but the Joyce wore me down, and I had to settle for the Summer of Reading One Famous Big Novel. (How's that for the hubris of youth, huh?) I read this book mostly in a coffee shop around the corner from my apartment, on afternoon breaks from dissertation-writing. I decided early on that I wouldn't try to understand every allusion in the book, and instead just immerse myself in the feel of the style. Six weeks of coffee breaks later, I had conquered one of the all-time heavyweights. It was well worth it.

4. The Shining by Stephen King [read in summer 1987, age 13]

I bought this one at the supermarket while accompanying my mom on the week's grocery trip and read much of it in the backseat of my dad's Thunderbird on a family road trip. When we checked into the Holiday Inn, I imagined it was the Overlook. I finished the book on the drive back home, listening to "Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles on my Walkman, surprisingly touched by the emotional quality of the book's final scene.

5. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem [read in summer 2005, age 31]

I still miss the book, nearly a year after I finished reading it. Rarely has a book been so emotionally in touch with my own memory: the bookish main character; the recreation of adolescent life in the city in summer; the fond descriptions of African American music; the difficult coming to awareness about how resolutely messed up the world can be; and the flights (both real and symbolic) of escape that help us to cope with that awareness. Maybe the most satisfying novel I've read in the past five years.

And you, reader, what are some of your all-time great summer reads?