Spending Your Summer Reading

'Hot!' said the conductor to familiar faces... 'Some weather!... Hot!... Hot!... Hot!... Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it...?'

When I noticed these lines from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in the New York Times Paper Cuts blog this week, I experienced a flashback that almost matched in intensity the seemingly incessant flashes of heat and lightning that have marked these Dog Days of July, 2010.

Gatsby was my first summer book. I read it in 1968, during the swelter of another July, because it was on a required pre-semester reading list sent by the college I'd be attending in the fall. Thus, Fitzgerald's novel, a summer book in some ways already, has always been one of my primary summer books (J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country is another).

But what if I had first read Gatsby in January? Would it have been my winter novel? Probably not.

Thoughts of books and summer inevitably lead my bookseller's brain to bookstores and summer: indie bookshops with A/C; used bookshops with endless aisles and shelves in cool, damp cellars; beach bookstores with offshore breezes sifting through screen doors.

That's all been on my mind during this tropical week in which I planned each day as a series of caravan journeys from one air-conditioned oasis to another. And it's what inspired me to begin considering a question I eventually decided I wanted to ask everyone in the book world.

That question is...

Ah, but first let me address rumors that this week's heat wave has inspired e-reader R&D teams to experiment with the next generation of devices, which will be equipped with micro-digital air conditioners designed to blow a refreshing breeze over your eyes as you read on blistering summer days (and be the perfect accessory for e-beach reading as well). Unnamed sources have confirmed that this feature will be available in our lifetime, though as yet it is not clear which particular devices will feature the "e-Air" (trademark pending) option.

See what a heat wave can do to your mind? This week put its own spin on the concept of hot summer books for a substantial portion of the U.S., as steamy post-Fourth of July weekend temperatures soared and sent most of us scurrying for shade, A/C and ice cube-filled glasses of... anything.

Was it too hot to read? No. Is it ever too hot to read? I suppose that depends upon where--and what--you’re reading. Another good question, and perhaps a bookish variation on the hot-beverages-make-you-cooler theory: Does reading a book set in a cold climate make you cooler, or is it better to read about even hotter places to gain the advantage of perspective?

All worthy questions, yet still not the ones I want to ask you. 

The first is for indie booksellers: What cool--literally and figuratively--events and promotions have you conjured to lure patrons into the cool--also literally and figuratively--book-lined confines of your shops during the next couple of months?

For example:

"It's cool here--so drop in and join us this summer," advised Kerry Slattery, general manager and co-owner of Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif., in her shop's e-newsletter. Slattery wrote, "Some of our customers have been requesting a return of last summer's 'Hot Summer Nights,' so we've decided to do it again this summer--reborn as 'Hot Summer Saturdays!'--we'll stay open till midnight for seven Saturdays (July 17 to August 28) and present a little music and other themed evenings. Join us for libations, or just come and browse till midnight."

And at the King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, Utah: "We still have a few spots open in our Friday Fun for Kids at the King’s this week--Camp King’s English. Do you like to go camping? Do you like to hear stories, spooky or otherwise? Do you like to eat s’mores? Then we have a spot for you."

Or the simple but effective lure of this Facebook post from Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Wash.: "We've got great books, an awesome staff, and delicious cakes at the bakery. But most important, we have air conditioning."

My second question is for everyone:

What was your first summer book?

I'd love to hear from you.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1228.