A dozen summer reads

And a few notes on the guilty pleasure of reading

Hey y’all,

In Darryl Pinckney’s essay, “My Literary Education with Elizabeth Hardwick,” he writes about Hardwick’s love of reading and her idea that a writer’s primary autobiography is the books she has read. “I remember her telling me that to be able to make a life around reading was such good fortune it was almost criminal.”

I feel the same way: Reading is a huge part of my job, but whenever I spend the afternoon in the pool underlining a paperback, I feel like I’m really getting away with something.

Here’s the director Paul Thomas Anderson:

I still have trouble reading a book during the day because it somehow feels indulging… You know, like oh, my - this is so naughty. I’m actually reading at 10 o'clock in the morning. I think it’s just your upbringing - something about like you got to go to work, and you’ve got to - and move on. And still even - this is how I make my living. I still feel guilty. 10 o'clock, I mean - and it’s - but I’ve sunken into the pleasure of it - to think, my God, I’ve got my life in a way where I can read a book in the middle of the day.

I have always wondered why I get so much more reading done in the summer. I think guilt, or a lack of it, may play a part: I don’t feel guilty about spending two or three hours reading in the afternoon when it’s July and it’s 105 degrees outside and everybody else is on vacation, anyways.

Here are a dozen of my favorite reads of the summer — no guilty pleasures! — in no particular order: