Now this gentleman has the Beach Read market cornered.
A book is a vacation all by itself. It can take you to another world, another time, another life in seconds and let you stay there for hours, days, even weeks. A book can take you on a vacation from your vacation. My husband’s family spent a few weeks in the Adironack Mountains of upstate New York every summer when he was a kid. The cabins were made of logs and had electricity (frequently knocked out by thunderstorms) but no telephone. There was no television and the radio could only pick up one station from someplace in Vermont. Entertainment was jigsaw puzzles, boardgames, cards and especially books. His parents would bring stacks of library books and each of the kids had a reading list as well. And if you ran out, there was the little Indian Lake town library ten miles or so down the road (when the road wasn’t washed out by those thunderstorms). It was during one of those storms he read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for the first time. And when the electricity went out, his parents were down the lane at his aunt and uncle’s cabin playing cards and he had to make his way in complete and utter darkness with the book tucked under his arm–too afraid to be alone. I learned of that darkness first hand years later when I made my first visit to their rented place up there. It was another storm and I was reading another book you’d never want to read alone–Silence of the Lambs. I’d been rehearsing for a play and the book (this was before the film) was making the rounds of the cast and it was mine for this short break we’d been given. Even on a sunny afternoon by the water, the book was terrifying, by candlelight in a thunderstorm, it took me out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I’d love to hear your experiences of fun summer reads. And if your book group is reading Chanel Bonfire, you could schedule a Skype or FaceTime Q & A and tell me about them in person. Just email me at chanelbonfire@gmail.com to schedule a time.
