This wonderful graphic that accompanied a lovely short piece in the New York Times Book Review titled “What I Read that Summer.” We have not explicitly written much about summer reading this summer, although to my mind summer reading is a thing apart. Words in the warm months are seeds, the long days are gardens for books to make a memory, not memories, a memory–the one you’re working with. This particular piece is made up of reflections by a dozen contemporary writers on “their most memorable summer reading experience.” This excerpt is from Louise Erdrich’s response:
And then I found “The Nylon Pirates,” by Nicholas Monsarrat. I thought it would be about pirates stealing women’s nylon stockings, which seemed shockingly tempting. It must have been the last straw, because the librarian refused to check it out for me. Instead, she gave me”Animal Farm.” “Let me know what you think,” she said. I loved it. “Well?” she said when I brought it back. “A great pig story!” I told her. She renewed the book with her special red stamp and handed it back to me. “Read it again,” she said.
This is very much worth a read…a short elegant appraisal of summer reading that captures what summer reading is…