Summer Reading List

Portals

Jun 15

Do you remember getting a summer reading list at the end of the school year? Or going to the library to sign up for the summer reading challenge?

I do, and there is something I really loved about both of those experiences. To know exactly what we were meant to complete over the course of the wide open endless expanse of three months (it is wild how different time felt in those early years). And at the same time, to have complete autonomy over when and how completing the reading would happen. Of course, sometimes that meant I diligently began with a book at the beginning of the summer, and then three or four weeks before school was to start up again, I’d remember the list and have to scramble, often not actually completing all of the reading by the time classes started back up. But I think what I really loved about summer reading was the feeling of all the possibilities of the worlds I would enter, and the ideas I would encounter, through the books; the vision of laying in the grass in the shade of a tree on a summer’s day with a book and hours of open-ended time.

I also just really loved having a list to check off as I made progress! There was something really soothing to me about the clarity of expectations laid out for me and only myself to hold me accountable.

Anyhow, I haven’t had, or made, a reading list in a long time. Probably not since graduating from college, and I thought I’d make one up for myself as part of this summer residency experiment.

I’m thinking of this reading list less as something that must be completed and more as a menu of inspiration. As if the books and the worlds and ideas they hold within them were creative nutrients to be consumed in service of feeding/fueling my creative practice.