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Summer Books?

Why is it that when newspapers like The Guardian ask famous writers to list their recommended summer books list, they tend to end up listing nada in the way of poetry, or barely any, anyway?  It tends to confirm my creeping dread, my suspicion, that poetry, like nothing, happens everywhere, to paraphrase.  Anyway, here are a few of the books, poetry or otherwise, battered and dogeared or brand spanking new, I hope to skim through this August, with suncream on (Factor 50):

Flicker, by Theodore Roszak (thriller about film);
Ludbrooke & Others (latest poetry collection) by Alan Brownjohn;
Twenty-one Locks (debut novel by Guardian music journalist Laura Barton);
The Idea of a Christian Society by TS Eliot;
The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan;
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood;
New Light for the Old Dark (poetry) by Sam Willetts;
Expressway (GG finalist) by poet Sina Queyras;
Patient Frame by Canadian novelist and poet Steven Heighton;
Fifth Busines (novel) by Robertson Davies.

Truth be told, every year I set out to read a dozen summer books, and maybe only finish a few.  I prefer to flit in my reading - and besides, I am completing a PhD currently.  I recall my Dad, who used to bring Moby Dick with him to our summer cabin by the lake in Quebec every year, and I don't think ever completed it.  But at least he sought the great whale.  The unfinished and unread books in our lives form a vast counter-library of loss and desire and hope - a possible other life not taken - that should be respected - it says as much about us as what we have read, and has shaped us as completely.
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Sheenagh Pugh said…
To be fair, "summer reading" or "holiday reading" means, to many folk, something undemanding that you can read with half your mind working, which poetry often isn't. I wouldn't take any poet more demanding than Harry Graham on holiday and my preferred holiday reading is David Wishart's Roman detective stories, when he's got a new one out.
Tue Jul 20, 10:06:00 am 2010
Bethan said…
The end of this post reminded me of one of my favourite bits of If On A Winter's Night a Traveller:

"You have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid manoeuvre you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too.

Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:
the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages, the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified."
Tue Jul 20, 10:10:00 pm 2010
Alan said…
for what it's worth T: Witz by Joshua Cohen
Wed Jul 21, 12:31:00 am 2010
Leona Carpenter said…
Some of my favourite holiday reading is complex poetry that I've read up to hundreds of times before and so can read easily with an almost physical pleasure - and still get some of the rewards of the underlying complexity. Thus, I'm wearing out my second copy of Rilke's Duino Elegies in the McIntyre translation.
Fri Jul 30, 10:26:00 am 2010
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