A time of rest calls to me.
Oh, I’ll keep working and checking off household duties too as they arise, but I’ll allow my soul a time of ease. I think of reading now for my Sabbath summer, and the term beach read floats to mind. What does it mean? A languid book? A breezy romance or fluffy mystery? A novel with a pair of bare legs next to a suitcase in the sand on its cover?
I recall the summer of 1995, the three sizzling months before I graduated from the University of North Dakota that December, and how I committed the season to reading. I asked a few people for recommendations, trekked to actual libraries to fetch physical volumes, and dove into them.
I dig out my old diary now to remember the titles, and sure enough, I listed them all. Only a few of those books would I classify as beach reads, but I treated them all as such—like sugary vacations from meaty reality. And because location matters, I even shoved open the living room window in our second-story married housing unit and climbed out, using the nearby entryway’s roof as a step stool to the real thing. The asphalt shingles were no beach, but they would do—and did—for as long as I could stand the piercing arrows of the day.
Here’s my summer of ‘95 reading list (with the authors):
The Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The World According to Garp, John Irving
The Red and the Black, Stendhal
Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend, Robert James Waller
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
The Bridal Wreath, The Mistress of Husaby, The Cross (all in the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy), Sigrid Undset (In some places, these titles are simply The Wreath, The Wife, The Cross)
A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle
Night, Elie Wiesel
The Princess of Clèves, Madame de La Fayette
Many Waters, Madeleine L’Engle
Happy reading, all! May your summer nights be short because of it!
