Lazy Summer Reading

By Suzanne Morgan Williams

So it’s summer and I’ve been doing everything but writing this post. I’ve been reading The Wright Brothers by David McCullough (fabulous by the way), writing, gardening, entertaining. Summer has a way of racing by, and yet some of my best memories are of staying up most of the night, windows open, cooling off from the heat of the day with a book. One marathon read was Gone With the Wind when I was about sixteen. Talk about hooked on historical fiction!

My personal summer reading program started with my father, who from the time I can remember, brought all of us kids a book for our birthday. It was never wrapped but we knew it was coming. He’d stop by Stacey’s Bookstore in San Francisco on his way home from work and choose a book for us. My birthday is in the summer. Ones I remember – Date Bait – a cookbook for girls (okay, it was the ‘50s), Our Wonderful Earth, or some such title, which told the story of the earth in geologic time, Jane Eyre, Heidi, All About the Insect World, Black Beauty. I treasure those times, reading late on August nights with my new birthday book that my dad picked out, just for me.

So I’ll be lazy with this blog post and ask you to remember. What books did you read late into the night? What books were given to you that you still think of? Books are connections to the author, the reader, the giver, the receiver. Those connections are powerful and not soon forgotten. Here’s to summer, and the people we love who love books.