SUMMER 101: THE GOOD ART OF SUMMER READING

For a student or schoolteacher, it is easy to understand why summer is a great time to catch up on reading. There's no school and not much thing to do, so why not read, indeed? But there must be something in and about the warm and humid air of summer which lights up the intellectual fuse that was somehow wet and slimy during the rainy season, or even dead in the dead of winter, and clamors for the beauty of the classics. I can guarantee. Some of the books I have strongest attachment to - Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Wright's Native Son, Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - were read in-between schoolyears of college, and I now analyze in retrospect if my enjoyment of the materials were due to their being read out-of-school, up and away from the meddlings and meanderings of literature teachers.

The bookstores are obviously banking into this summery phenomenon; customers are often greeted by huge signs that announce the hot buys of the hot season: Summer Readings, Buy Three Get One Free!

And so I'm up into this fold. I am currently reading three books, each one assigned a specific time of the day to complement the mood, which hopefully could bring me well into the height of summer and asking for more -

Lunchtime - The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Pre-Dinner Time - Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Bedtime - A Curtain of Green by Eudora Welty

Of the three, Divisadero engages me the most. Ondaatje never fails to amaze me. He is like the Joni Mitchell of fiction literature and every line, every sentence, is substantially relevant and luminous. His Anil's Ghost (which he autographed for me) continues to haunt me, and his book of poetry, Cinnamon Peeler, proves that great prose and great poetry can very well reside in the pen of a single writer.

And so, on this hot and humid day (or however it is in the manner of your own little skies), what is keeping your literary eye busy?