Summer reading 2026

02 Oct, 2026

This summer I did the adult summer reading program at Melrose Public Library:

Under one reasonable definition of "summer," here are the books I read this summer, in chronological order:

1. Sartor Resartus
2. Everything We Do is Music
3. Notes from a Small Island
4. Make Believe
5. Prisoner of Trebekistan
6. The Song of the Lark
7. A Month in the Country
8. Banal Nightmare
9. Gullah Geechee Home Cooking
10. Norwegian Wood
11. The Hound of the Baskervilles
12. Music: A Subversive History
13. Persepolis
14. Romola
15. All the Beauty in the World
16. Netherland
17. An Anthology of Our Extraordinary Earth

It was a glorious summer of reading, and easily the most reading-centric summer I've had as an adult. Misc. thoughts:

1. The nudges to read across genres and time periods helped a lot. It's easy to set a goal to read broadly, but a lot harder to do. One reason I fail at this is that it's pretty easy to read widely on some dimensions but not others, and to thereby feel that one's coverage is better than it really is.
2. Simply reading more had compounding benefits. There were a bunch of books about music, all of which made the others better and more meaningful to me, and I was able to do this without neglecting everything else. The lighter fare (Bill Bryson, the Jeopardy! memoir) was enjoyable and meaningful, but didn't take too much time away from other reading.
3. Sartor Resartus and Music: A Subversive History are sticking with me even a bit better than I thought they would. Philosophical and comic merit aside, I'm struck by just how vibrant and energetic Sartor Resartus is.
4. I'm particularly grateful that this library offered an adult reading program that wasn't only about current social issues or about modeling reading habits for younger people (as worthy as those goals are!). Most of the reasons for reading we give to children also apply to adults!

#reading