It's Beach Read Season
How should we find the best beach reads?
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Note: I’m doing some book events in July and August, and I’d love to see you there!
I am going to the beach this week during what meteorologists call “another heat wave.” I am calling it “life in hell.” Now, I love summer, we’re almost in Leo season and I like the heat. However, this diabolical humidity in New England is simply beyond the pale, and by “pale” I mean me, frying in the sun.
I am packing up my sunscreen, umbrella, tent, and everything Wednesday Addams might need to feel safe on a beach, and hitting the road. Before I do, I need to figure out what books to take with me, which got me down a deep rabbit hole about beach reads. Let me take you through my process.
The idea of the beach read has a long history, and initially was framed as a time when Victorians et al should read serious and educational books to improve their minds while on vacation. This dream didn’t last long, however, in part because of the rise of the paperback and the romance novels the format more easily put into the hands of readers who just wanted what Mariah Carey would call “a fantasy.”
Needless to say, the morality police (men, ministers, male ministers who hated fun, probably Carrie Nation) attacked the vaporous summer reads that exploded in popularity as cheap books became more freely available and rising literacy rates exposed more readers to them. In an essay on the history of summer reading (drawing on Books for Idle Hours: nineteenth-century Publishing and the Rise of Summer Reading by Donna Harrington-Lueker), Los Angeles Public Librarian Daniel Tures quoted one minister from 1876 who was deeply in his feelings about romance novels:
"These paper covered romances… the heroine an unprincipled flirt… chapters in the book that you would not read to your children at the rate of a hundred dollars a line? . . .I readily believe that there is more pestiferous trash read among the intelligent classes in July and August than in all the other ten months of the year."
Pestiferous trash is EXACTLY what I need right now. I’m talking about a book that would never be assigned for summer reading in school; not one included in the recent New York Times list of best books of the twenty-first-century, and not one I’d love to recount in grave detail to an elderly relative at a family event in response to the question “what have you been doing with yourself these days?” Nothing educational, grandma! I once attempted to read The Odyssey at the beach in high school because it was assigned reading and I was truly waiting till the last minute as I’d spent my summer reading anything but that. Big mistake. Not the page-turner you’d expect! I also once attempted to read Siddhartha on the beach in high school because a boy lent it to me and told me it was his favorite book. I bring this up as a personal reminder that book recommendations from philosophy majors leave me with feelings of disappointment, too many questions, and pangs of regret (not unlike boys I dated).
Now, where do we get our great book recommendations these days? A recent (and great) piece in Esquire last week explored how celebrity book clubs actually work. It’s not a bot, and it’s not a passionate intern, but something in between. Staff members bring in books they feel strongly about, the figureheads of these clubs love to read and want to share favorite books, and, in some cases, industry nepotism prevails. Sometimes these books are already out in the world and “discovered’ by book club staff, or selected before their debut. Whatever the case, it’s rarely a book that no one has ever heard of. Though the book club sticker can be life-changing in predicting success, it doesn’t really solve a problem of surfacing books that might not otherwise find an audience.
For that, you have to go to #booktok, a place I have found many of my fave reads, beach or otherwise. As Sophie Vershbow notes in Esquire, celebrity book clubs are losing favor as the trendsetters for what’s hot in part because #booktok is meeting Gen Z where they’re at, and offering a less filtered network for readers to get trustworthy intel from other readers. This kind of open-season recommendation space is especially important for readers who don’t see books that reflect them anywhere else. Speaking for myself, I never thought romance was a genre that would interest me in part because I never saw many queer romance novels around. When I was first coming out to myself, I read The Price of Salt and specifically used self-checkout at my local library because I was so afraid to have someone see me interested in such a gay book. What that make me gay? (story checks out). People talk about TikTok melting our brains and perhaps opening us up to surveillance, and yet, it has been invaluable to me in introducing me to new writers, critics, and artists I wouldn’t otherwise know about. I now have ongoing message threads with queer friends comparing not only romance reads, but memoirs, histories, etc. that often don’t get written up in magazines etc.
It used to be that readers’ advisory was a part of every library, and librarians would be available to advise patrons on what books would match their specific requests. There has been a turn against this in recent decades as it has felt too didactic or like a minister yelling at women for liking romance novels in 1876. However, #booktok has filled that void for me in addition to actual word-of-mouth recommendations which continue to be the best (which sometimes also includes librarians and informal readers’ advisory). I do wonder, though, what a librarian would make of my specific beach read requests:
if Daria morgendorffer was a real person and actually voluntarily went to a beach (not plausible), what book would she take with her?
if Sophia Petrillo was awaiting the return of the pope to claim his stolen ring, what book would she read on the lanai to know peace?
What book would be in Jessica Fletcher’s beach bag?
Speaking of fan fiction-style speculation (or readers’ advisory), reflection is the key to great book selection. Like the nineteenth-century ladies just trying to have a good time with a paperback and Mariah Carey, I have to be willing to ask: what kind of literary fantasy do I want to have on a beach? Do I want to get deep in a mystery in some Agatha Christie-type world? Read a hot romance, a memoir that completely pulls me in, or a history book that transports me somewhere completely out of my own head? I like to take a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and of course, my US Weekly and Vanity Fair (I also stan Real Simple which may be a sign of my age).
What are your favorite beach reads? I’d also love to hear your favorite beach reading memories.
FWIW, my current packing list includes a Kitty Kelly bio (her books are insane and there’s something about how unhinged she is in mixing unsubstantiated gossip with actual historical research that makes it fun to read at the beach), a bio of Elizabeth Taylor, and possibly the new Kevin Kwan novel. What should I be reading???
Call Me! (or not!)
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Thanks for reading!
This is a free post for subscribers of Landline. Consider subscribing to the paid plan to get my weekly email of recommendations and links, a podcast episode, and more! You can also help me spread the word by sharing it with a friend who would love it. Thank you for being a friend!
Note: All books referenced in Landline can be found in my bookshop.org storefront from which I earn a small percentage of all books purchased.