Things that actually matter

Yes, yes, you're all up on matters political, but what are you reading? Read any magazine, webzine, and even blog during the summer months, and everyone is in your face telling you what books they recommend, but in winter no one bothers. Why is reading only a topic of general interest only in the summer? Do people not read the giddy year around? Surely the ideal time to curl up with a book is February, when it's sleeting and there's a lovely fire in the grate and a glass of scotch to hand, and not August ,when you can spend time body surfing and poking about the outdoors and calypsoing to "Rum and Coca-Cola."

As a pitiful conformist, I must admit that I do do the summer reading voodoo that I do so well, and every year, when I go foraging for the summer vacation reading pile, I hear the voice of Professor James P. Warren thundering in my ears in his passionate summation to some random classroom diatribe: "When you go to the beach this summer instead of reading John Grisham's latest, why don't you read something decent like Henry James' The Golden Bowl?

You will doubtless intuit from this comment that Professor James P. Warren is an idealist in matters literary. I was one of the biggest dweebs in the long history of "Introduction to American Literature", and I would never consider reading The Golden Bowl at the beach. It is far too long and serious. The secret to a good beach book is brevity and frivolity. After all in Summer we're going to live forever, dancing along the ocean shore or the mountain heights, laughing about the uncle who died from the chestnut blight.

Winter, however, is the ideal time for getting to grips with those massive novels that you always swore you were going to read and never did or did read but remember imperfectly. Despite central heating and the advances of medical science, in Winter, as we slip on icy sidewalks or suffer from the flu, we become aware of our own mortality, and thus more inclined to think about the more serious matter of life. Books that center around the nature of man and the state of the soul, books that seemed downright depressing and dreary in summer become warm and comforting.

I am not alone in this opinion. I have data, anecdotal data to be sure, but it will have to do. A group of friends spontaneously formed a book club around The Brothers Karamazov this winter, and they are, to a person, madly gung ho for the book. At parties while other dance and chatter, they sneak into corners to palaver about characters and scenes and themes, whispering so that those who haven't read as far as they won't hear them. Now go ahead. Try to form a Brothers Karamozov book club in the summer. You'll find that A will be out of town for weeks, B will be too busy with summer soirees, and Caesar will be willing but somehow will never get around to going to the library or the bookstore to obtain the book. (Admittedly the first time I read The Brothers K. was during the Summer, but I was a teenager, and thus by definition peculiar. )

So break out the Cragganmore, or the Lagavulin, or even, if your tastes incline this way, a few a well chilled shots of your favorite vodka and pull out that big long novel you've always been meaning to read. You?ll find it easy going.

And if you can't think of a big long novel you've always wanted to read, well, there's always The Golden Bowl.