Summer reading

I was never the sort of kid who got upset about summer reading. Summer reading meant a trip to the library to get the books, which meant that I could get other books as well. Then there was the fact that it was reading homework. “I’m doing my homework” was pretty much a no-fail excuse to get out or - or at the very least, put off - doing some other, much less fun chore, like weeding the garden or cleaning out my closet. Plus, I really liked reading. Even reading a book I didn’t like was still generally preferable to not reading.

But looking back, for the most part, I’m not quite sure what the point of summer reading was. For sure not in elementary school, where I don’t remember ever discussing any of the books that were assigned. High school was a little different, especially once I was in the AP classes, as the summer reading tended to be “here are books that might be on the exam, but that we’re not going to cover, read them and write things that will help you practice exam-taking skills.” So there was a purpose, and there was a grade at the end of it.

Still, I mostly don’t remember what I read for all those years of summer reading. (Except for Crime and Punishment the summer before senior year of high school. Although, I swapped it out for another book on the list because I started it, decided that the translation that I had was horrendous, and attempted to read it in the original. Please note, in case you are also afflicted with hubris, three years of high school Russian is not enough to equip you to read a novel by Dostoevsky.) It’s not that I’ve forgotten the books themselves, I just don’t quite remember if it was A Separate Peace that I read in the summer and A Farewell to Arms in class or the other way around.