Do you change your reading habits during the summer? I do. I have a much harder time concentrating in the summer; I just want to be outside all the time. I tend to read gardening books rather than literature, and more short stories than novels. Anything I can hold in a hammock.

What are you reading right now?

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001

Answers

I don't tend to change my reading habits over the summer. I don't tend to change my habits at all. For years I've tried to say, "after I finish X I will relax more, hang out more, sit outside and read more," but I somehow always end up spending way too much time on my computer.

Right now I'm reading The Actor's Life: Journals 1956-1976 by Charelton Heston. I like a lot of The Hest's old movies and it's interesting to see him writing in his own voice, rather than being ghost-written by some NRA publicity hack. Still, its very fragmented nature (basically it's a reprint of his journal, which was one paragraph every day) makes it difficult to keep up with. I'm really looking forward to what he says about the making of APES and OMEGA MAN, but I've got a ways to go.

I'm flying home to visit my folks and visit some pals in NYC for the weekend (plus Monday and Tuesday). I leave here at 8pm tomorrow and get in at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday. I dunno if I'll bring The Hest with me on the plane or Cash by Johnny Cash. I also have The Big Book of Western Action Stories that I might bring.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001

I definitely change my reading habits over the summer. Or should I say "changed", since my recreational reading right now is pretty much nonexistent since deciding to go back to school without quitting my day job.

In my current pile of non-school, non-work books, I have a couple of books related to a medical condition I'm dealing with, three or four medical or legal "thriller" types (my usual summer fare), the last two books in Tad Williams' Otherworld series (unlikely to be touched until fall), and a big fat pile of magazines (my other summer vice).

The medical books I'll read on a reference and skimming basis, the magazines will get flipped through while I eat, and the rest will probably not move until late summer at best.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001

I am dedicating this summer to improving myself. I got a summer job that pretty much allows me to read for six hours a day so I decided that it was the perfect chance to get around to reading all those books I have been meaning to read one day. You know, books by Faulkner and other Important People. I also plan on travelling to South East Asia in the fall and so have been reading lots of history and travel books about the area.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001

No. I read obsessively, all the time. I read to relieve the dead place inside of me, to animate my matter. I read so as to matter. The only circumstance that changes my reading is when I am on an airplane. Then I read to anesthetize myself. Otherwise, I read to refreash and expand my soul.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001

I've been reading a lot more lately because of being laid off since March. However, my summer reading won't get to be light and frilly - i start school in 5 days, in Travel and Tourism. My summer reading will likely be a lot of reference material for the various reservations programs and big old Geography books. I'm looking forward to the Geography part though, especially the Sun Destinations course!

George is generally a pretty quick reader, but he's been reading the same 350 page Dean Koontz book for months because he's been so busy with work that reading amounts to 5 minutes here and there. I foresee that for my summer, with the exception of magazines.

I think i'll miss reading.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2001

I read more magazines in the summer. There's nothing better than a comfortable couch by an open sunny window and a big stack of new magazines (or magazines checked out of the library) next to me. Or sitting on my porch swing with magazines. And it can't be all of one type. There has to be an "I'm trying to be younger than my age" magazine like Jane, a weekly news magazine, the Utne Reader, an Oprah or Martha Stewart or In Style, and something celebrity like People. All of these things make me very happy come summer.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2001

Julie, that's pretty cool that you can check magazines out of your library. Mine has magazines but they're sort of like the reference books - you must read them there, not at home.

It's probably for the best since i tend to read magazines while eating or lying in the tub - not the best thing for reading material that doesn't belong to me!

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2001

I read just as much during the summer, and I still read both 'hard' books and fluff - but I definitely have noticed that I read more fluff in the warm weather, more challenging stuff in the cold. It really IS a heat issue for me, my poor Canadian nordic brain can't take this semi-arid baking sheet of the Rockies. When I was still in college, I read a lot more fluff during the year (not counting assigned stuff or research) - to rest my brain from the hard work of school - and tackled the 'fascinating but requires paying attention' material over the summers. Going back to school this fall, while remaining in Colorado - it'll be interesting to see which impulse wins out next summer. Examples of 'fluff': _Dune: House Atreides_, Tanya Huff, Kage Baker, young adult novels - it doesn't have to be STUPID writing, just relatively undemanding. I also tend to read in a more piecemeal fashion in the summer - right now I am reading the above mentioned Dune prequel, a slight but interesting book called _Zen Christianity_, and a Robert Penn Warren book. In pieces. I am getting through the Dune book at about twice the rate of the other 2 though.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2001

Summer should be a time for lighter reading, sure, but for some reason I am determined *now* to read those leather-covered tomes. I've recently finished A Treasury of Sherlock Holmes, and have started on Thackeray's Vanity Fair, though I'm skipping over a lot of annoying parts. After that I have no plans to read anything in particular, but then, I have no hammock.

I also read a lot of technical books, RFCs, and the like, as well as The WSJ in the morning. I am a capitalist tool (and a former English major).

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2001