Friday Mood Recs: Make-your-own summer school for curious readers
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What was your relationship with required summer reading as a kid? As much as I loved to read all through my education, I detested summer reading requirements. I wanted to read what I wanted to read, and so I would wait until the absolute last minute to read whatever I was supposed to read for school. I remembered this feeling into adulthood, and as a teacher, I hated requiring summer reading. I do get the impulse. We obviously want young people to be reading during the summer, and perhaps it is important for them to read something somewhat challenging to keep their skills up. But to be honest, in my experience, summer reading is often used as a place to dump the books no one wants to teach, but people still think should be read by today’s youths.
But now that I’m an adult, I kind of crave a summer reading list. Sometimes I even wonder if part of our literary cultural obsession with summer reading guides is somehow attached to both the feeling of summer reading freedom and the core memory of being given a list of books by our teachers. I’ve also gotten to a place in my own life where I’m feeling the encroachment of intellectual stagnation. I’m lucky enough to still have places (like the comments section here and the FM Literary Society’s virtual book clubs) where I get to be curious and challenged in a very fulfilling way.
And yet I still find myself craving something a little more rigorous in my reading life. I’ve gotten comfortable in how I read. One of the best things about grad school was being pushed to approach texts in new ways and see beyond my initial impressions of a book. I’m looking for that again and am on the hunt of books to help me get there.
For those who feel similarly, I’m sharing seven of my favorite books that have influenced my own reading life (plus one on my TBR). None of these books are to be taken as literary gospels, but each of them has something unique and important to say about craft, writing, and reading and can illuminate the words on the page in exciting ways. And if you have your own recommendations that I ought to add to my personal make-my-own summer school course, please leave them in the comments below!
