BEST OF BOOKS
What makes a quintessential summer read? Generally speaking it must be suitably trashy. Or it has to be funny or entertaining enough to make you feel like you’re getting away with something – but secretly good enough to have real staying power.
In the summer, an underrated bad book is far better than an overrated good one: save those for winter and your desperate search for meaning in the long night. In the meantime, here are 10 great reads for the beach, the cottage and the sweltering BloorDanforth line.
10. HARDY BOYS #4 THE MISSING CHUMS BY FRANKLIN W. DIXON
Yes, many people would say that The Secret of the Old Mill is the superior mystery, or even the Tower Treasure or While the Clock Ticked. But summer is not about old mills, or towers – and certainly not clocks. Summer is about friends. And these friends are missing.
9. THIS ONE SUMMER BY MARIKO TAMAKI AND JILLIAN TAMAKI
Endless summers at the cottage and the momentous changes that can happen between school years seem perfectly drawn in this Governor General’s Award-winning graphic novel – totally transporting even if you’re reading it on the subway.
8. JURASSIC PARK BY MICHAEL CRICHTON
It’s a good wager that this same property will appear on the Summer Movies list (checking ... confirmed). Sometimes a work and its adaptation are both so entertaining that it’s pointless to try to rate one against the other. But it should be noted that cinema just can’t convey the interior monologue of a Tyrannosaurus rex the way prose can.
7. THE SECRET HISTORY BY DONNA TARTT
Even though summer is to be savoured for itself, it’s also a season of anticipation – none more so than the summer before university. Donna Tartt’s publisher should start mailing The Secret History to all high school seniors, because this is exactly what university is like: occult knowledge and the slow asphyxiation of mentally abusive friend groups. I can practically taste the dorm cafeteria food as I write this.
6. FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC BY V.C. ANDREWS
A simple story about childhood sweethearts that proves no confinement can stand up to the power of a child’s imagination. Okay, well not quite. But if salaciousness is what you’re after in a good summer read. This has it in droves.
5. IT BY STEPHEN KING
Many years ago I spent a summer watching Twin Peaks re-runs at 3 a.m. Later I learned that the network also ran the show at 3 p.m., but I made the terrifying choice to continue watching it in the middle of the night. Returning again and again to the 1,000+ plus pages of Stephen King’s It over the course of a summer feels exactly like this.
4. VALLEY OF THE DOLLS BY JAQUELINE SUSANN
The merciless pans this novel, about making it in the big city, received upon its release only made it stronger. The more you criticize it, the more likely it is that someday all books will be Valley of the Dolls.
3. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE BY JANE AUSTEN
What cures the summer heat better than long conversations about manners in drafty old houses? This classic will also relieve your worries that the guy you like is not actually being rude to you – he’s just misunderstood – and everything will totally be fine in the end.
2. A GAME OF THRONES BY GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
Either of the first two sequels in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series could occupy this spot, but we’ll go with the first one, which sets the table deliciously for the rest. Bonus points because the paperback is hefty enough to stay on your face for the duration of your nap.
1. BRIDGET JONES DIARY BY HELEN FIELDING
Once a student in my English Lit program asked what I had read over the summer, and as I stammered on about John Fante or some sort of nonsense, she revealed that she had read Bridget Jones’ Diary. I pretended to know it, assuming it was a classic epistolary novel. Later I learned that this was, in fact, the case.