“There is no frigate like a book,” Emily Dickinson wrote, “To take us lands away.”
Summer is the perfect time to jump aboard that frigate.
Think about it. For many of us, summertime summons up thoughts of vacation. We’ll spend a week at the beach, make our way to Iowa to visit Uncle Bud’s farm, head for the mountains to beat the heat of Atlanta, set out on a driving tour of the American West.
We venture off on these excursions for all sorts of reasons: to relax, to escape our routine, to get a change of scenery, to discover new places and seek out adventure.
All to the good. But as Dickinson suggests in her poem, books and reading can also sweep us off to strange lands and grand adventures. From the comfort of a backyard hammock or a sofa in the den, we can explore faraway countries, meet with heroes and villains, face dragons and monsters, go back in time to Classical Rome or spring forward a millennium to battle alien invaders on Mars.
For students freed from the demands of school, summer’s the perfect time to grab some books and set out on an adventure.
If you’re in doubt as to what to read, help is at hand. Google “summer reading list” and you’ll find dozens of sites with suggested titles and mini-reviews of books. The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) offers excellent books, breaks them down by grades, and gives a quick summary of each book. Goodreads.com has an extensive list of books for high school students, containing familiar works like To Kill A Mockingbird and Animal Farm to titles new to me, like Cinder and Insurgent.
Such lists are available for adults looking for similar adventures.
The next option—and one that provides an adventure in itself—is to visit your public library. Browse the shelves. In my search for books to review for such publications as the Smoky Mountain News, one of my great pleasures is to stumble across an author I’ve never heard of. About a year ago, for example, I found David Hewson’s Nic Costa series, detective novels set in Italy and featuring wonderful writing, vivid characters, and intricate plots. I read my way through these like a man possessed, and though I gobbled down the feast set before me way too fast—the plots of the various books became jumbled after two weeks of hard reading—I left the table the happiest of readers.
“I don’t like books,” some young people have said to me in the past. “I don’t like reading.” It’s an attitude I confess I don’t understand, but let me make a suggestion, at least to those who prefer hopping around on electronic instruments to plunking their way through paper pages.
First, try reading on your tablet—not emails from friends, but books. Or if books are daunting, then set yourself a goal to read an essay or two every day. There are fine essayists today online, scores of them. (Hey, you could even read jeffminick.com.)
Next, find books that fulfill two categories: edifying, and exciting.
Edifying is a stuffy word (I used it because I liked the alliteration with exciting) meaning educational and enriching. (That alliteration just won’t go away. Be gone, Alliteration! Be gone!) What do I mean by this? Simple. I mean books that are good for the soul. These can range from Calvin and Hobbes to Anna Karenina, from the old Travis McGee novels to Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, from romance novels to the Westerns of Louis L’Amour.
And by exciting I mean any sort of reading that makes you reluctant to put the book aside and eager to pick it up again. De gustibus non est disputandum: about tastes there can be no dispute. Read what you love. In my work as a reviewer, I rarely ever write a negative review of a book because my editor allows me to pick the books for review. Why on earth would I want to read a book that had no appeal for me? For you students especially, unless your teacher has assigned you reading the summer, this is the season when you get to pick your reading.
Time to hoist the sails of Dickinson’s frigate, weigh anchor, and set out on your own personal summer adventure.
For students freed from the demands of school, summer’s the perfect time to grab some books and set out on an adventure.
If you’re in doubt as to what to read, help is at hand. Google “summer reading list” and you’ll find dozens of sites with suggested titles and mini-reviews of books. The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) offers excellent books, breaks them down by grades, and gives a quick summary of each book. Goodreads.com has an extensive list of books for high school students, containing familiar works like To Kill A Mockingbird and Animal Farm to titles new to me, like Cinder and Insurgent.
Such lists are available for adults looking for similar adventures.
The next option—and one that provides an adventure in itself—is to visit your public library. Browse the shelves. In my search for books to review for such publications as the Smoky Mountain News, one of my great pleasures is to stumble across an author I’ve never heard of. About a year ago, for example, I found David Hewson’s Nic Costa series, detective novels set in Italy and featuring wonderful writing, vivid characters, and intricate plots. I read my way through these like a man possessed, and though I gobbled down the feast set before me way too fast—the plots of the various books became jumbled after two weeks of hard reading—I left the table the happiest of readers.
“I don’t like books,” some young people have said to me in the past. “I don’t like reading.” It’s an attitude I confess I don’t understand, but let me make a suggestion, at least to those who prefer hopping around on electronic instruments to plunking their way through paper pages.
First, try reading on your tablet—not emails from friends, but books. Or if books are daunting, then set yourself a goal to read an essay or two every day. There are fine essayists today online, scores of them. (Hey, you could even read jeffminick.com.)
Next, find books that fulfill two categories: edifying, and exciting.
Edifying is a stuffy word (I used it because I liked the alliteration with exciting) meaning educational and enriching. (That alliteration just won’t go away. Be gone, Alliteration! Be gone!) What do I mean by this? Simple. I mean books that are good for the soul. These can range from Calvin and Hobbes to Anna Karenina, from the old Travis McGee novels to Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, from romance novels to the Westerns of Louis L’Amour.
And by exciting I mean any sort of reading that makes you reluctant to put the book aside and eager to pick it up again. De gustibus non est disputandum: about tastes there can be no dispute. Read what you love. In my work as a reviewer, I rarely ever write a negative review of a book because my editor allows me to pick the books for review. Why on earth would I want to read a book that had no appeal for me? For you students especially, unless your teacher has assigned you reading the summer, this is the season when you get to pick your reading.
Time to hoist the sails of Dickinson’s frigate, weigh anchor, and set out on your own personal summer adventure.
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