And by “worst” I mean:
1. I haven’t been to the beach all summer. Not really.
2. No matter what I read, it seems to become unbearable at some indefinable point. I keep trying to pick something benign, but right now there is no such thing
3. I still can’t FINISH a book. Not possible. So I get through one chapter here, one chapter there, and am finally exhausted by how personal everything seems. I read the style section of the newspaper or a comic strip and it seems like a personal attack.
4. I realize that that is one of the definitions of insanity: you take the laugh track on sit coms personally, like people are laughing at YOU, etc. So yes, to the person who emailed me anonymously (although I know who it is) telling me that I should “stop being mysterious” because it makes me “sound crazy” – you’re right! What an astute diagnosis. Thanks for your concern, and I hope if you ever have a rough time of it that someone is as kind to you as you have been to me.
5. I don’t like the concept of “beach reads” anyway. The assumption that EVERYONE wants something light and fluffy in the summer. When I go on vacation I usually bring something big and heavy that I have been avoiding reading during the bustle of life and now can devote some time to. I get that a lot of people love more light reading in the summer, and yay for you, but I choose very carefully what I bring “to the beach” (even though I don’t go to the beach these days) and it’s usually something huge and classic and arduous – because I have more brainspace on vacation to devote to something like War and Peace or The Red and the Black or some huge detailed biography of De Toqueville or something. These are my “beach reads”.
Thanks to cousin Mike for the idea for this post. And for everything else.
Top 10 Worst Beach Reads That You Don’t Read at the Beach Because You Don’t Even Go to the Beach and You Keep Trying to Not Be So Crazy But You Can’t Help It Because Sometimes Life is Just Like That and Hopefully It’s All a Phase But You’re Not Holding Your Breath and Besides At Least You Can Still Read Your OWN Writing Which is the Most Important Thing Right now, In Terms of the Work That Needs To Be Done and You Tried To Read These Books But You Can’t Seem To Finish Them and You Find It Alarming and Frankly Unfair That There Is An Ambush In a Book About Peter Lorre, Although You Do Want to Say That These Are All Obviously Fine Books
1. Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace
2. Beware of Pity
3. A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman
4. The Crack-Up
5. Young Stalin
6. A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing
7. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer
8. Story of O
9. The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre
10. Sestets: Poems
Glad to see Charles Wright is not being read on the beach- I saw him read at UNH and he is not to be taken lightly!
I love him so much. What was he like in person??
Very mellow, soft-spoken, and regular.
Yikes! Those are definitely not the kinds of titles the glossy mags have in mind when they recommend “summer reading” for the beach. I don’t like to go anywhere near a beach (too bright, loud, gritty, like being in a screaming blast furnace, inhospitable to humans), but I’m with you. I’d probably take along Kafka or Dostoevsky for the occasion, just so I could feel more in my element…
Jim – having grown up in the Ocean State I am definitely a beach girl – although I’ve never been into reading AT the beach. I like to SWIM at the beach, and then perhaps take my huge Stendahl book to a local bar with an outdoor deck and have a beer and read, with sand still stuck between my toes. ahhh. Now I miss the beach!
But yeah, can you imagine Glamour magazine recommending THOSE books as “beach reads”? Subscriptions would plummet. Or who knows, maybe they would skyrocket – and wouldn’t THAT be something?
I look forward to picking whatever GIANT book I haven’t had time for during the year to bring with me on vacation. Dostoevsky is a perfect summer read. I need a lot of SPACE for him.
Yes! Greatest post title ever!
While at the beach this summer I read “the worst hard time”. By tim egan about the people who stayed behind during the dust bowl years. Zetoun by David eggers about a man and his life post Katrina. And ” never let me go”
All great–
the dust bowl—whoa. Way worse than I ever imagined.
Mike – I read that last fall – loved it –
Cousin Mike – I’ve heard a lot about that dust bowl book and would love to read it, although I’m sure it will ambush me right now so it’ll have to wait.
What did you think of Never Let Me Go?
I was haunted by that thing for a good 2 days – couldn’t shake it.
That title made me laugh out loud, oh boy have I been there, and sometimes return there unfortunately. I think that for a type of bookish, bright person it especially stings because whatever else your brain is your constant companion and friend. And when it decides to punk out on you and start staying out at all hours it feels like a betrayal. Not to mention bad manners. I never got the idea of “beach reads” either. I love to read anywhere and as mentioned when you’re on vacation you have more time to read the heavier stuff.
JessicaR – I am glad to hear it is not only me! It is a total betrayal – especially now when I need my distractions the most!!
It’s going to be awesome when I can FINALLY read a book again and not have it be all about me and my ghosts and my disappointments or whatever it is that ambushes me.
I should write a list Beach Reads For the Intellectual. I’m sure it’s been done before. There is nothing original – but it might be fun to make up such a list.
I definitely have seasonal books–books that I find myself craving whenever the temperatures start to change (The Secret Garden in March, Doctor Zhivago in December)…but, oddly, nothing for summer.
That list sounds about right to me. But then again, I spent my staycation reading “Crowns in Conflict: The Triumph and the Tragedy of European Monarchy 1910-1918.”
I highly recommend the chapter on Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria. He was, I believe, a hoot.
I love you, Lisa.
Reba – I love the idea of seasonal books. I’m trying to think now if I have such a thing and I don’t think I do – but I love the idea.
I remember reading Harold Robbins’ ‘The Adventurers’ on Jekyll Island way back when. As any reasonable adult could tell you, the book is a piece of mindless trash, but, for a then 14-year-old, it was sexy vacation fare. I still have fond thoughts of Dax Xenos, Amparo, Sergei, and Fat Cat. If I met a woman name Amparo tomorrow, and she “admired my steely loins,” I’d probably go for it. Over the years, I have read 50-60 books while at one beach or another, but I don’t think I have viscerally enjoyed any of them as much as The Adventurers. Again, it is a piece of flotsam, but timing is everything.
And, you, dear Sheila, are not crazy. If you are, I wish more people were.
The definition of beach read for me is: a book I want to read, but can buy in the cheap, crappy format so I won’t care when it gets filled with sand, damp or in any other way damaged or destroyed.
I love most of my books too much to take them to the beach, so I tend to read crappy magazines there.
I am definitely not reading “The Effect of National Culture on the Choice of Entry Mode” (Kogut and Singh, Journal of International Business Studies Fall 1988) on the beach.
But I read a bunch of papers a lot like it in the back yard over the weekend, at the little picnic table under the clubhouse in the kids’ play-yard.
Come on, dude, you have to finish “The Lost One.”
Anne – Wow, not sure how anyone could completely miss the point of the entire post – but you sure did! Did you even read it?
DBW – “admired my steely loins,”
hahahahahahaha
Look, we all would like to have our steely loins admired. That is just a fact!
Yes. That’s the kind of discerning admiration from which we all could benefit. Raises are fine, notes of congratulation are much appreciated, but neither compares to a little unabashed loin admiration. Really picks up your day.
I’ve been reading the complete works of LM Montgomery – at least all the short stories. In chronological order. That’s the mental level I’m at with reading these days.
I won’t even get into whether your sanity is anybody’s business to speculate about. Besides, people with no problems are boring. You are never boring. :)
Books are seasonal for me, like clothes and food. I want deep and heavy and dark in the winter. In the summer I want science fiction and kids lit – fun stuff. Spring makes me crave poetry and romance. (Jane Eyre, not bodice ripping).
I so rarely get to the beach that escaping into a book is usually the last thing on my mind. I’m busy painting watercolors in my mind, people watching and digging around in the sand like a little kid.
WHAT!!?? “The Story of O” isn’t a beach read!!??
: D
Nothing’s a beach read these days. The real point of the post. This is a personal post about my experience during a very dark summer of my life – not a slam on the books.
I love Story of O. Thought it might spark something – that at least I could finish it (I’ve read it many times before) – but nope. Had to put it down.
Happy to say that I am making some headway in the Stalin book.
One of the good things about it is that the chapters are short. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it does help. I read one or two pages and I’m done with a chapter. Makes me feel like I can keep going. It’s also very well written and fascinating – but I think the reason I’m able to keep going is because the chapters aren’t too long.