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.