A love letter to summers past and the quiet power of books.
There’s something about summer that begs for a book. Maybe it’s the longer days or the slower pace, but for me, summer has always been the season of sinking into stories. Before the world could fit in our back pockets in the form of smartphones, before you could scroll endlessly through a feed or ask a watch what time sunset is, we had books. Real ones. Paperbacks with cracked spines and sand trapped between the pages.
I graduated from high school in 1981. That was the era of feathered bangs, cassette tapes, and curling up with a book because, quite frankly, there wasn’t much to do when it got dark and you couldn’t go outside. No laptops chirping for attention. No group chats buzzing with memes. Just time. Time to pass, to waste, to savour. Time to read.
Even now, the feel of a softcover book still conjures a salty breeze and the sticky feel of sunscreen. Those summers at the beach were bookmarked by whichever paperback I had in hand. We didn’t read to impress or to review on Goodreads. We read because a friend told us this story would sweep us away. And off we went.
When Oprah launched her book club in 1996, it wasn’t just a marketing moment; it was a movement. We flocked to bookstores, not Amazon, to get the next must-read. Remember bookstores? The dusty, magical aisles, the smell of coffee and print, the anticipation of finding the one? I picked up Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone for a road trip to Kelowna. I remember lying on a towel by the lake, sun-warmed and slack-jawed as Dolores Price broke and healed before my eyes. That wasn’t just a story. That was a summer.
Books don’t just stay on the shelf; they root themselves in your memories.
Janet Fitch’s White Oleander reminds me of being propped up by a large log and a striped towel on Chesterman’s Beach in Tofino. I devoured The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou at the Sooke Potholes, the rhythm of her words echoing the flow of the water. Pearl Cleage’s What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, now that one I couldn’t put down. I sat criss-crossed in the back seat of my girlfriend’s car, the windows down as we drove to Zeballos. I think I even skipped lunch and dinner to keep reading. Although back then most meals consisted of a Tab cola and a bag of Lay’s.
And Billie Letts’ Where the Heart Is? That was a Penticton road trip read. You know the kind, you pretend to listen to the car conversation, but you have to find out what happens next to Novalee and Americus.
An algorithm didn’t choose these books. They were passed from hand to hand, recommended over coffees, discovered at garage sales, or dog-eared in my sister’s beach bag. I still have them all. Not arranged by colour for Instagram clout or alphabetized like a librarian’s dream, but stacked, a little haphazardly, in my office. Each one is a souvenir from summers past.
Today, it’s hard not to miss those quieter moments. We’ve traded our downtime for screen time. Even on the water, it’s hard to resist checking messages or snapping photos instead of just being. Sometimes I think about how long it’s been since I’ve read a novel in one glorious stretch, the way I used to, lying on the back deck until the sun set and I could no longer see the words.
Reading, especially in summer, isn’t just about entertainment. It’s a form of surrender. You give yourself over to another world, another voice. You slow down. You listen. In a time when everything is on demand and everyone’s yelling over each other, reading is a quiet, radical act. It’s the long game. The scenic route.
It’s not lost on me that I’m typing these words on a screen and you’re likely reading them on one, too. But maybe, just maybe-this is your nudge. This summer, you reach for a paperback instead of a podcast, and you tuck a novel into your boat bag. That you allow yourself the luxury of being unavailable. Because when we unplug, we don’t just escape, we remember.
We remember the freedom of sitting with nothing but a story. The joy of having no place to be and nowhere to scroll. And we remember that our greatest adventures don’t always need a ticket; they just need a page.
So this summer, whether you’re anchored in a quiet cove, waiting for laundry at the marina, or stretched out on the dock with a glass of something cold, bring a book. Let it take you somewhere. Let it remind you of what it feels like to make time, pass time, and savour time.
Because the stories we read become the summers we never forget.
Looking for your next read, check out my blog, “15 Boat Reads for your Summer on the Water”
See you on the water!
