The newspapers talk about reading in seasons, most recently about summer reading. Do your choices differ according to the season? Do you have cold-weather titles or warm-weather authors? Do you tend to re-read during one season over another?
I want to get into Don Quixote this summer, because of the anniversary this year. That doesn’t fit the normal “summer reading” profile.
I think it is nonsense – just another feeble marketing strategy in an industry seemingly overburdened with feeble marketing strategies. I think what they mean by ‘summer reading’ is light reading: thrillers, romance, etc for ‘the beach’. But I’m just as likely to read Wittgenstein on the beach just as much as I would read ‘The Da Vinci Code’ or similar there too.
Personally, I just read whatever I can extract from the unread book piles without being buried under the avalanche when the whole thing collapses around me.
Anyway, its nice to read a book against the season, as it were, set in say, the hot desert, in the middle of the winter and one set in, say, Siberia in the heat of the summer (bearing in mind I live in the UK where the summer can only be identified by the slightly warmer rain).
(BTW if you want to see what I think of book publishers marketing strategies in general take a look at my blog, there are a few posts there on this subject.)
Yeah, it doesn’t appeal to me, but I don’t know that it’s nonsense. If the majority of book buyers are thinking about taking it easy and here’s a fun book that claims to be great for a lazy day, then the book is appealing to its market.
My usual question is that I don’t notice contrary marketing, like the fall season being a great time to read something challenging. “Looking to improve yourself this winter? Try our new releases.”
Whither the Beach Book?
To whit: Phil at Collected Miscellany asks whether reading choices are related to the season. Anthony Miller looks into the “summer reading” semantics. The Columbus Telegram takes the tone of a schoolmarm, perhaps losing potential summer readers in the…