When I open my e-mail in-box, the atmosphere is manic with anticipated literary delight-subject lines blaring “the perfect summer read” and “SUMMER THRILLER” and “best books for the beach!”Īnd yet there’s no cultural consensus on whether summer reading is “a thing.” “The term is so ubiquitous that its definitions are a point of contention,” Michelle Dean wrote in the Guardian, in 2016. Summer reading-so much expectation and anxiety and judgment is compressed within those two words! June hardly has a chance to throw on a bikini and step onto the deck before morning shows, magazines, and Web sites descend with their “Beach Reads” and “ Summer Reading Lists” and “Summer Fiction Top Tens.” Bookstores set up displays with the latest hot paperbacks, their colors so saturated that they pulse under your eyelids like sun spots.
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