Photo credit: Jeffrey S. Otto

I don’t remember much about the characters and plot of Keith Kachtick’s 2003 novel, Hungry Ghost. But I do remember where I read it, and how I felt about it. I was in Grayton Beach, Florida, the year it came out, reading the book during lazy days lounging on the pristine sands of South Walton and breezy evenings on the balcony of the townhome where I was staying. I was peaceful and calm, and the book’s fictional meditation on the relationship between its Buddhist protagonist and his Catholic love interest – I had to look that up to jar my memory – suited the contemplative state I was in. Similarly, I don’t recall much about Nick Harkaway’s 2014 novel Tigerman, either, other than that I liked it. Though when I look at the book on my shelf, I immediately recall a perfect summer week on vacation with my wife, prior to having children, in Ocean Grove, New Jersey.

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I can say this about many of the books on my shelf. John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley takes me to Tucson, Arizona, where I chose the book as my companion for a visit with a friend almost 15 years ago. When I want to reminisce about a solo trip I took to Italy more than a decade ago, I have only to look at the spine of Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad. If you know the book, you know it was the perfect choice. As recently as last year, I read Tennessee author Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows while vacationing in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. For all I love about that book, it also reminds me of early mornings on the back deck of my rental cabin, watching the mountains slowly reveal themselves as morning fog lifted and the birds began to sing.

Splendid Summer Reading

And then there are the vacation books I’ve picked up along the way. It’s one thing, for example, to read Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree and have it make you think of Knoxville. It’s an entirely different thing to buy a copy of Suttree while you’re in Knoxville and have the book make you think of the time you spent there. A paperback copy of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel transports me back to my first trip to Wolfe’s hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. My copy of Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain was purchased at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky, on a New Year’s trip. I treasure Jesuit priest and author James Martin’s book, Learning to Pray, which I acquired and read at the Ignatius House Jesuit Retreat Center in Atlanta.

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Summer is the time for reading. For those of us who read all the time, it’s the time for even more reading, hopefully for extended and uninterrupted stretches on the beach or in the mountains. I have young children, so that usually means stolen time in the early mornings, or trading off pretend naps with my wife in the afternoon. Major newspapers and magazines put out large reading lists at the beginning of the season. Publishers push out blockbusters. And seemingly every website offers a listicle of a dozen or more works of fiction or nonfiction that you simply, absolutely, must read this summer.

Books on the shelves at the T.B. Sutton General Store in Granville. Photo credit: Brian McCord

The idea of the lists is not only that hopefully you’ll have extended reading time in the summer, but that you’ll want to escape where you are once you have that time. You don’t want a book that makes you think about work, or getting your kids dressed and off to school in the morning, or how many months you have left in that interest-free financing plan you took advantage of to pay for the massive plumbing work you needed when the 75-year-old cast iron pipe under the slab of your house cracked. You want another place; another time; another existence. You want fantasy; romance; transcendence. When I choose a vacation book, that is what I want as well. When I look at my bookshelf, however, what I discover is often something different. Some of my favorite summer books often put me in the very place; the very time; the very existence in which I read them. They take me back there, every time I look at them.

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This summer, take a good book with you on vacation. It might do more than all your smartphone photos to imprint the experience on your memory. Or maybe pick up a book on your travels. It might wind up being your favorite souvenir.

About the Author: Joe Pagetta is an arts writer, essayist and museum communications professional in Nashville. He is currently writing a book for Vanderbilt University Press on Father James Aloysius Orengo and early Catholic life in Middle Tennessee. More info about his writing can be found at joepagetta.com.