Anyone care for a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils? I know. One minute summer is slipping by languidly, the very next it’s whizzing past, and before you know it those Back to School ads are reminding you it’s almost time to watch the movie “You’ve Got Mail” again. I’ll pass on the pencils for now: I can’t abandon my summer reading just yet.
A few days ago while on the phone with my best friend Adrianne (who lives in Central California) I started combing my bookshelves, noting the spines of childhood titles. In October 2020 I cleared out my storage unit of belongings in Boston (the last place I lived before I returned to Northern California in 2018). I donated 75% and shipped the remaining 25% back, including my childhood books.
It was a winning decision — with a burst of triumph I exclaimed, “I’ve got all nine Baby-sitters Club Super Specials! I think I took this one to camp. What about a buddy read?” Adrianne (friends since the fourth grade) didn’t have her childhood copies but that didn’t stop her from checking out Baby-sitters at Shadow Lake from the library the next day. I’m jealous of the fact that Adrianne’s library is open seven days a week while our Chico library is only open four.
Sometimes we discuss fundraising ideas we’d implement if we were in charge. An elegant murder mystery dinner party in the library: women required to wear ball gowns. A pie auction, but each pie is partnered with the pie maker’s favorite book. How about a sleepover in the library? We’d never run out of things to read. Some might think we’re bizarre book nerds but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
So we’re squarely in the middle of this re-read and though planned at the last minute, there’s something incredibly fun and refreshing about it. I’m not the same person I was the first time I read Super Special #8, but re-reading my childhood favorites as an adult is delivering a delightful flavor of summer reading.
The memories of those childhood summers of book swapping with Adrianne are rooted in me — it’s difficult to articulate the magic of those expansive days: the combination of almost endless hours of reading, playing with the cats, golden afternoons of swimming in my grandparents’ pool, fighting with my brothers and beating them at Street Fighter 2, jaunts through Bidwell Park, the delicious sunset scent of the sweet oaks, the toasted soil, and my mother’s rose bushes.
Summer activities in Chico were abundant — swimming, exploring, solving mysteries, eating ice cream, but when we weren’t riding our bikes to my grandparents’ house or being chased by aggressive geese by the lake in California Park, you’d find Adrianne and I sprawled out with books in the cool of the house.
Most of the time we’d be reading copies of the same story, and if not, we would switch when we reached the end. We were series junkies with “The Baby-sitters Club,” “Nancy Drew,” “Sweet Valley High,” and “Choose Your Own Adventure,” but we also entertained elevated tastes with the Bronte sisters, L.M. Montgomery, and some more “adult” works in the way of Rosamunde Pilcher, Anne Rivers Siddons, Agatha Christie, and Anne Perry. I think we both tackled “Gone with the Wind” at 13.
Our routine was to read for an hour or two, take a break and chat about what was happening in our respective books, maybe grab some ice cream from downstairs, and then get back to reading. You don’t need to hire Sherlock Holmes to conclude that we were and are book fanatics.
“It’s strange — the books I remember the most are the ones we read those summers in our tweens and teens. It’s true, isn’t it, that your reading as a young person sticks with you in a way other reading doesn’t …”
She agreed.
“But if the books I have read have helped to form me, then probably nobody else who ever lived has read exactly the same books, all the same books and only the same books as me. So just as my genes and the soul within me make me uniquely me, so I am the unique sum of the books I have read. I am my literary DNA.” ― Susan Hill, Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home
You can email Katie at teachingbeyondthebooks@gmail.com
