The past couple of years I have enjoyed paying more attention to how the seasons change and how my own habits change accordingly—including reading habits, which absorb a significant amount of time over the course of my weeks, months, and years. For you as well, I’m sure.
I’ve had four different favourite seasons, and we celebrate every equinox and solstice, but in recent years, I’d begun to feel as though those celebrations felt separate from my day-to-day. Sometimes, when I drew the blind to focus on my work—rather than whatever was happening outside my window—I would think about how it could be either the heart of summer or core of winter when I lifted it next. Because nothing of the outer world was visible, not even a crack of light. Sometimes that felt fun, but mostly it didn’t feel good.
But fixing it didn’t feel good either; it felt clumsy, trying to pay proper attention to the seasons again. Like those square-dancing classes in school: I really thought you could learn by watching, but of course then you are always a little bit behind. You have to memorise and count, instead, to keep the flow.
The past couple of years, while I’ve been posting about how the seasons would appear in my stacks and choices I’d pull from my shelves, weeks would pass quickly. Sometimes I’d still be reading one of my choices when the next equinox/solstice was looming. It felt like that square-dance-class, being just-behind-the-beat, except that I managed to strike a pose just when the music ended.
But now I am counting and feeling the beat: I started to gather and read my summer choices throughout the spring. I love these little Everyman’s Library anthologies, but I’ve never read one (anthologies are one of my reading intentions for this year). Their little ribbons, the breadth of selections (in eras and styles), and their size: all appealing.
The title, the cover and the whole nature of this volume appealed (from Ovid to du Maurier, Lawrence to Irving). I started reading in the rented car, while Mr. BIP dropped off the lawn-mower to have its blades sharpened, beginning with the last story—by R.K. Narayan, “Under the Banyan Tree” because it fits with my reading some of his novels this year. And, later, I “discovered” two new-to-me writers: Joseph Zobel, via his story “Flowers! Lovely Flowers!” and Yvonne Vera, via her story “Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals”.
Zobel (1915-2006) was born in Martinique, and he’s best known for La Rue Cases-Nègres, a coming-of-age novel published in Paris in 1950, which was partly based on his own experiences growing up on the island. It’s been translated as Black Shack Alley and Sugar Cane Alley, and he thought of it as being like Black Boy by Richard Wright, which had been published five years earlier and was also partly rooted in autobiography. Zobel’s short story opens with such a beautiful description of spring, I wanted to prop it up among the lilies-of-the-valley for a snapshot. But it ends less happily.
Vera (1964-2005) was born in Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia (which is Zimbabwe today), but she came to Toronto for her undergraduate studies. Her first novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1993 and, the next year, her second novel won the prize for the region of Africa. “Why Don’t You Carve Other Animals” is from her first collection of stories, and it is about carvings of forest and savannah animals, but it’s also about the people who come and go from the Africans-only hospital in the city.
Whether my other choices feel summery to anyone else, that remains to be seen. (Do tell! Even if it’s not summer where you are…) But a children’s classic smackesof school vacations and, even though I wasn’t a Frog-and-Toad reader when I was young, these stories are charming and fit perfectly with a recent reread of The Wind in the Willows. The abundance of flowers on Anne Of Greenville appealed (but I read everything Mariko Tamaki writes, so that was simply convenient). And I just liked the idea of a swimming pool selection and the roaring sea for more adventurous water-scenes.
You can see from the photograph these are all library loans, so this post is at least in part a celebration of #LoveYourLibrary, hosted on the last Monday of each month, by Bookish Beck. And the jigsaw puzzle was also a loan! The puzzles I own are mostly 1,000 pieces, but sometimes I crave over-sized pieces, speedy assembly, and the cute scenes they have …at the library.
You know I love the spooky reading season! I actually just got an anthology of horror stories to start reading in September to get me in the mood.
Also, weird non-bookish question. I have a lawnmower similar to yours I think – the bladed push mower, not the gas powered one. How often do I need to get the blades sharpened, and where do I go to do that?
Wow, that is planning ahead for sure (although it’s crossed my mind, too, and I do have my Oates choices in mind)!
It’s as easy as getting your skates sharpened or your kitchen knives… some sharpening places specofically advertise the lawnmower services but you can ask other sharpeners too.
Then, once you have a place you trust, it’s a matter of how often and how extensively you use stuff. We keep our grass quite long, so once/season is fine for us.
Herein ends BIP’s Tool Tips for today. lol
Yay for celebrating the seasons and being mindful of how the transition affects you/what feels relevant or pertinent to your day to day. Great diversity in the books you write about as always. I love my local library so much, I always have like 10,000 books on hold and checked out and they know my face now. Yay for loving our libraries!
How did I not know this? I thought you were more about buying than borrowing (well, we all love buying books, of course, when it comes down to it). By now I’ve finished all these and they were all good in their own ways: I hope whatever’s in your stacks this summer is just as satisfying!
I almost never read seasonally – either the exception of wanting to read Christmas-y books in December! I guess it’s because I don’t really want to “plan” my reading ahead of time. It’s sort of how I stopped doing “themed” Storytimes at the library. The theme began to feel restrictive and sometimes books were just shoehorned in to fit the theme even if they weren’t the best books. Mood reader forever I guess.
I wish my library had puzzles on loan. But we are not very progressive in any sense so they stick to the basics.
You’ll be glad to know that Frog and Toad are very popular always!
I don’t exactly/usually plan it either, which is why the idea of Rebecca’s planning intrigues me. But I have entertained some possibilities in recent years and, then, “ran out of time” so those are still in my mind, which is akin to planning maybe? And I feel as though, once I start looking with, say, summer, in mind, there are loads of options right there in front of me.
Ohhhh, I find it so disappointing when a themed booklist feels forced. It feels to me like you can spot the ones that were wedged into the mix!
No puzzles in the Toronto library system either, so I love having them where we are now. For quite awhile, I borrowed one every time I went, but lately I’ve been biking and the boxes are bulky in my saddlebags.
I never read seasonally. I just read! I don’t really cotton onto the idea of beach reads, either. At least, I understand what they are but I don’t really think about reading in that way. I think what the seasons mean to me is more about how and where I read, rather than what I feel like reading. And even then there’s not much change as these days I mostly read in a chair or bed. I don’t like reading outside in summer because of the glare, and not in winter because of the cold. I don’t know how people read on the beach or lying in parks. Lying on my back and holding the book up just doesn’t feel comfortable, and lying on my stomach and reading in, I guess, cobra position, doesn’t feel comfortable either. Part of it because I take notes or write marginalia when I’m reading and you can’t do that easily when you are lying – on front or back.
I did some square-dancing at school, but mostly we did those old-fashioned dances like Bill is talking about – Pride of Erin, the Barn dance, the Prgressive Two-Step. I adored them, as I love/d dancing (though I was never very good as I pronate quite significanlty, so don’t look very elegant!) That and gym were the only physical activities I really liked, which perhaps explains my preference for things like yoga and tai chi now to going to “the gym”.
Chatting with you and Bill, I feel as though the distinctions between the seasons there might not provoke the same kind of seasonal thinking that comes when one is changing wardrobes and managing completely different outdoor tasks/responsibilities. When you’re trying to more fully inhabit the space you’re inhabiting, on the couch and in the broader world, you can’t just layer up the Tshirts or add the jumper you wear when it’s cool and shed them sequentially when it’s not, you have totally different clothes for the cold (quite often even the Tshirts get rotated when you pull out the next season’s clothing…even if you have very few clothes) and maybe that leads to the idea of whether/how other habits change too. But I’m sure there are plenty of other Canadians who don’t read with the seasons in mind either! heheh
It’s really hard to find a comfortable position to read, I agree. Especially when one wants to take notes. Especially while ageing. I’ve been trying to use the transcription on my phone to save some typing for notes (thanks to Jacqui’s suggestion), which makes it easier sometimes, but I don’t always want to interrupt the quiet space with my reading aloud either (and it wouldn’t substitute for your marginalia-habit anyhow). Thanks for introducing me to the idea of pronate; I would like to say that I have that, too, but I think I’m just a bad dancer. heheh
I should explain that of Australia’s capital cities Canberra has the biggest seasonal differentiation. We have minimums below freezing in winter, and get regular frosts (vegetable gardeners don’t plant tomatoes until late October – that is, mid-Spring, for example). So, Canberrans do have quite different seasonal wear. I don’t touch my t-shirt drawer in winter. Also, I think there’s a psychological thing, in that seasonal readers see summer as holiday time and different reading time. In other words, while I agree weather is a factor in whether you are a seasonal reader or not, I do think it’s only one factor.
I love knowing that you have a T-shirt drawer for summer-use only. I just dug out the summer bin over the weekend to see if there wasn’t another pair or two of shorts in there, because it’s already been too hot for too long and my wardrobe options are limited (no luck, but another nightie, bonus!). It feels to me like the routine holiday times here are more related to school schedules (and, later, remembered school schedules): is that true for you, too, generally? Or is it more like in France, where there is a broader cultural acceptance of holiday times?) School schedules here are province-wide, so there’s some variation but just a cuople weeks or so.
We didn’t square dance at any school I went to. The only dance I remember now is the Pride of Erin.
I love The Wind in the Willows and all my various grandchildren have copies, but, I know I’ve told you, I prefer Grahame’s The Golden Age, which, to stay on topic, is a wonderful evocation of one English summer.
It would never occur to me to read seasonally, let alone to shelve my books that way (if it were possible). My books are shelved by… that would take forever to explain, but I do have a system and if I had more space I’d stick to it.
Maybe it’s a rural school thing? Did you have PE classes, in which you played proper sports? At some point in school, I realised everyone else had been taught rules for sports while I’d been square-dancing… abominably.
I’m glad you mentioned it; I definitely want to read it (and the follow up) and will watch for copies second-hand (hmmmm, actually, I didn’t check to see if they’re avail. new… I’ll look).
Haha, I don’t shelve that creatively either, but Rebecca is a master-shelver, so I think she might? You’ve just got so much heat, all the time, down there… I’m not entirely sure I could read in response to seasonal change there either? In any case, there are plenty of other ways to engage and choose, etc.
I faintly recall the Frog and Toad story but can’t tell if I’ve read or heard people chat about it so often that I feel as if I’ve read it. Either way, it fits the summer vibe.
I know what you mean, there are certain books that I have to think twice about, to figure whether I’ve read them or I simply believe that I’ve read them because they’re part of the culture now.
My library started loaning jigsaw puzzles fairly recently. I donated a few unwanted ones after Christmas. (People haven’t caught up with the fact that I don’t do jigsaws anymore and still buy them for me as presents; I’ve now updated the text on my online wish list to explicitly say no puzzles, please, so we’ll see who reads that!) I have some great summer reads on the go. I think they all have Summer in the title, so they’re more obvious selections.
I dunno if these 300- and 500-piece puzzles are intended for children or not (there are separate puzzles downstairs with the children’s books which are clearly for kids)? But they’re often whimsical and bright, and I have borrowed everything from fish to umbrellas, just for that brief bit of fun. I wonder if your gift-shoppers will be disappointed that they can’t shop for puzzles anymore: maybe they’ll have to take up doing them themselves! I chose the Eric Puchner you rec’d as my summer read for the NYT Summer Reading challenge, and then, afterwards, noticed a romance I’d borrowed with “Summer” actually in the title. Have you ever shelved your seasonal reads together?
I do have a half-shelf of seasonal reads in rough month order. But I mostly ignore it, in all honesty!
It’s a nice idea, though: it seems like it s-h-o-u-l-d work.
A reread of The Wind in the Willows sounds delightful, and it’s good to hear it tied in with some of your other summer reading. I’m also trying to find more time for paying attention to the changing of the seasons outdoors as it’s all too easy for months to rush by without noticing. And I love the spring and summer seasons, especially the milder weather, which always helps.
I often associate coming-of-age stories with the summer months, so they’ll probably feature in my reading – and some summer films, too!
Ohhh, it was so good. Just exactly the kind of gentle, accepting, compassionate story I was craving. (And there was a most interesting essay at the end: I had no idea it had been so poorly received!)
That makes sense: those times when the biggest orchestrator of a child’s time (i.e. school) is not a factor, those are the times when one can stumble into other situation where the unknown and unexpected (or unavoidable) can alter the trajectory in a plot-satisfying sort of way.
This looks like a wonderful collection with a broad set of authors. The two you profiled are new to me, and I was sad to see that Vera was born half a century after Zobel but died a year earlier.
I haven’t really synced my reading up with the seasons, but from my recent reading, I think The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout would fit because of its cover design of a sunlit beach house (although the novel itself is not particularly summer-themed).
The selection is quite appealing, but I most appreciated finding Narayan there and these two new-to-me writers. If it was sitting on the bedside table though, I would happily have read cover-to-cover.
Oh, that would work for me, too, the cover: like Jacqui says, it’s really about paying attention and, because I always am looking for ways to manage the unmanageable TBR, paying attention does end up affecting decision-making.
Libraries are the best, but I don’t know if mine does jigsaws. I do know what you mean about sometimes needing one you can finish quickly, though…
Some people can go stir-crazy (get cabin fever) in the heart of winter up here: there are some unique offerings to combat that risk of isolation and/or overwhelmedness. (One library branch even has Sunday contests, where participants race to finish jigsaw puzzles!)
Some lovely summery choices! I’ve not picked any summer reads but I will have a look in the TBR. The heat here has been so oppressive the last week I’m feeling quite drawn to icy cold reads too!
I saw a prompt while browsing a friend’s reading challenge, read a book with a summer *cover* during the summer, and thought that was a cute idea/variation. Another was to read a book whose cover fits into the landscape you’re sitting in while reading (which wouldn’t have to be outdoors, of course). [That’s The English Bookshop’s challenge in Sweden and the Pop Sugar challenge on Lithub, if anyone’s curious.
And you’ve got moving house and related tasks to manage, too: definitely not fun in the extreme heat. Take care!