Unfinished summer reading and the advantages of a hard copy

I once picked up a bright orange copy of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley while on vacation, having enjoyed the first couple of pages in an air conditioned bookstore. I brought it to the beach and read, drunk on heat and bightness, my head swimming. My eyes were half dazzled by the reflection from the water, even as I shaded the just-off-white pages in order to read in the glare.

As Mr. Ripley considers whether to kiss or murder Dickie Greenleaf, on a boat, the scene I imagined was permeated by the same heat and sun and rhythm in which I read, though my water was colder. I can feel the bone chill of the water in my ankles, from my eventual run into the waves.

That is one kind of quintessential summer reading experience, though I did finish this thriller immediately.

Another is my reading of a John le Carre spy nove,l the title of which I cannot remember, beside the pool. I spent a few summers at a few different pools reading the book, its cover curled and its pages bearing evidence of the splashes and the sun. In between, the book spent at least one winter in the trunk of my car, baking and freezing. My Kindle app on my phone is probably where I put in the most fiction reading time, my Kindle is sturdy, but not that sturdy. The printed book has some unbeatable features.

I have not yet finished this novel and I’m not sure who is spying on whom, though I do remember enough that I want to get back to this story, even, hopefully, this particular copy. I think it’s still in a bag with some goggles, organized not by author or genre but by the context of reading.

Many of my most memorable summer reads have never been finished, and they’re not all thrillers and spy novels. Anna Karenina and The Brother’s Karamazov both qualify as summer reading in my personal system. Who has time to read massive books like that, unassigned, while studying English and therefore having stacks of assigned texts? I started Anna Karenina one summer in high school and read over half before school started back up in the fall. I always meant to return to it, though extensive Russian novels are are rarely my top reading pursuit. Tellingly, when I decided for reasons unknown to read another one during down time at an art gallery job during grad school, I started The Brother’s Karamazov. I was almost relieved when the semester started and I could freely abandon the extensive philosophical discussions that dominate my memory of the book.

Summer reading is determined by the context of the reading experience, by the way the book promises to fill unstructured months, by how well the dazed feeling of being overheated accompanies the plot, and by whether the book can be catalogued with swim gear.

Why is reading a book only once the norm?

I used to think it was lazy of me to re-read. There’s definitely a certain kind of energy that is not required upon a second or third read.

But that energy doesn’t mean the first read is superior to subsequent reads. Making a particular cake for the first time takes more energy than subsequent bakes, and it is not generally considered a lazy waste of time to make the same cake a second, even a third time. People are celebrated for perfecting particular cakes, even.

After all, the first bake is high risk. Are all of the ingredients included in the ingredient list? No. You have to carefully read through extensive discussion about how beaten a moderately well beaten egg should be to discover that you need vanilla—and, oh, approximately 2 tablespoons of boiling water in which to dissolve the espresso powder that you have discovered is fused into a hockey puck. There you are, mid-egg-beating, attacking the hockey puck with an ice pick while boiling water and trying to get the vanilla lid unstuck.

Such are the perils of following a recipe for the first time. You learn a lot and with luck the result is enjoyable. But clearly baking that cake next time will go more smoothly, unless you wait so long you forget everything you learned the first time.

Reading a book for the first time is, likewise, fraught with peril. Some may spend their energy distracted by worries about a character they like who seems determined to make bad choices. I’m talking to you, Anita Brookner heroines. Others may read a book about family and love and despair stubbornly focused on global warming because that’s the significant lens for them at that time. I’m talking to you, theoretically-minded readers. Perhaps the likeliest distraction is simply ploughing through to the end to “find out what happens.”

Clearly a second or third read presents an opportunity for a new experience, and who is to say that it’s the first read that matters most? If re-reading is lazy, surely it is a laziness to embrace.