There’s something different about summer reading. Curling up with a book in cold weather may be cozy and comforting, but 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. For me, memories of reading in the hot summer months always take me back to family vacations on the outskirts of Bancroft, a beautiful town in Southern Ontario’s Cottage Country.
When I was in middle school, my family began renting a cottage for a week or two each summer. It was an escape from the suburbs, trading the community pool for a lake, pavement for grass, and bicycles for canoes. Shortly before leaving, my sisters and I would pile into the van for the customary trip to the library. We’d wander the stacks, tracing our fingers along the spines, being generous with our choices as we knew we had days and days to fill with stories. After an hour we’d traipse out, each with a stack of books up to our chin, and those stacks of books would be piled into an IKEA bag and packed in with us to make the trip to our little piece of borrowed paradise. At the cottage we’d carefully unload and re-stack our books in a corner where they didn’t pose a tripping hazard, and as the week went on the piles would shift, and the books would get a little more weathered as they were left out in the sun or splashed by a rogue cannonballer.
The memories of lugging multiple books down to the dock for a day of reading in the sun are so precious, gilded as they are by nostalgia. These days when I select a book to read, there’s often an element of obligation: I should read this title to educate myself, or that one to keep up with bookish conversations. Summer reads release me from that-between May and September, I feel I not only can but should truly read for pleasure. Perhaps that’s why the memories of pages turned under the sun (and my current TBR stack) are as warm and inviting as a day by the lake.
Bronte joined Second Story as Sales Coordinator in 2020, and it was the best thing that happened to her that whole year. A graduate of Trent U and Centennial College, she worked as a book sales rep for three years before landing here, where she is overjoyed to be involved in pushing the feminist agenda. Like most people in publishing, she loves eating, reading, and cats.
