The longest days

20 Books of Summer 746books.com

We’re into June now, the threshold to summer – for those of us in the northern hemisphere at least – and thus an opportune time for bookbloggers to consider hot reads, all courtesy of Cathy at 746books.com.

And when I say ‘hot reads’ I mean the meme 20 Books of Summer and its lesser siblings, 15 Books of Summer and 10 Books of Summer, which I’ve participated in for a few years now as a scarcely incentive to immerse myself in fiction and nonfiction.

And when I say ‘twenty books’ I mean that as usual I shan’t be naming a hard and fast list of precisely that number of titles but merely a wishlist of works I’d like to read – mostly those titles that will fit in with book meme events I want to participate in.

Of moratoria and memes

‘Woman Reading in the Reeds, Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer’ by Édouard Vuillard (1909): Fitzwilliam Museum.

You may remember that a little while ago I proposed to initiate a Year of Reading Randomly into my plans. All well and good, you may have thought, but just wait until a shiny new meme catches his eye. And you may well have been right.

But, I suppose, behind my thinking was the knowledge that my book acquisition was again getting out of control. Again? Yes, again: lockdown had for a few months stopped me browsing in bookshops, my preferred method of acquiring books because of their physicality – looks and size and feel and design all make a difference to my enjoyment of a book.

But since then – despite regular boxing up of books I’d read, to be then gifted to charity shops, or the offering of titles to friends and family – somehow the dratted things kept worming their way into the house and filling up any flat surfaces, all much faster than I can consume them. What’s to do?