On Summer Reading

(Found here)

“The problem of summer reading is being discussed again among people and by periodicals. That phrase ‘summer reading’ is always just a little bit irritating, as if books, like butter, were affected by the temperature. But often if the books are not, their readers are, and it is not every book that you care to take with you on your summer vacation.

Even a robust intellect must flinch from Herbert Spencer or Locke when the thermometer is a hundred in the shade and the mosquitoes are buzzing outside the windows. Philosophy is a burden at any season, and in the summer it is not to be thought of. But why people select this exhausting time of the year when palm leaf fans and soda fountains alone make life worth living, to devour trashy fiction, is the open question. Is there anything on earth more tiresome than a poorly written novel? Plato on the Soul is thrilling and sensational compared to one. When will people learn that it is not their solemn duty to endure the stupidity of inferior yellow-backs?

While you are picking out good trout lines and good tents and good rifles for your outing, pick a few good novels. Poor ones are just like cheap goods of any kind. It is not every book that can keep up with the world in the summer time, or that is good enough to take into the woods. There are only two kinds of literature, good and bad, and if you are not equal to the good, you had better let it alone altogether.”
~Willa Cather (1896)