How I selected my summer reading this year

My wife carefully curates her summer reading before we head for Canada and our house on Nova Scotia's South Shore. My summer reading is selected using a different method, one that is risky but, some summers, immensely rewarding. It goes like this:

From Walden, New York, we drive to Bangor, Maine. Then, from Bangor, we drive to St. John, New Brunswick, where we get the ferry across the Bay of Fundy to Digby, Nova Scotia. From the ferry terminal at Digby it's about a three hour drive to our house and you might think that, after so many hours on the road, we'd head right for it, right from the ferry terminal. But actually we make a stop in Digby before heading for the house. We stop at Frenchys. It's a must.

My wife goes through the ladies clothes for her summer wardrobe. I've mostly gotten my fill of clothes from Frenchys but I'm eager to see what books they might have.

This year (2025) when I first looked into the book bin I was disappointed. It was almost empty. There was probably a reason for this. Usually we make it to Canada at the end of June, in time for the local Canada Day celebrations. This year we had some delays and didn't arrive until the last week of July. Others had grabbed up all the good books and this book bin is only stocked at the beginning of the summer.

But I did want some summer reading so I picked seven books out of the bin, all authors and titles unfamiliar to me. I had low expectations for my selections.

That changed when I started reading.

My first book was Berji Kristen: Tales from The Garbage Hills, by Latife Tekin, translated from the original Turkish by Ruth Christie and Saliha Paker. It's about low -- very low -- income people whose community -- their houses -- are all built on a garbage dump and, for those who work for wages, their workplaces -- the factories they work in -- aren't far from the garbage dump. Their environment is full of toxic waste -- chemicals from these local factories which infuse the air these people breath and the water they drink, the effects of which is just taken for granted. They have no options.

Tekin's tale is low key. No preaching; no shouting. She just lays it out for you and how you look at it is up to you.

With the Garbage Hills behind me, I picked up The Watsons Go To Birmingham -- 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis. My wife noticed the Newberry Honor award on the cover and told me I probably wouldn't want to read a kid's book, but I thought I'd give it a try. I devoured it. Aside from the interest in the book, I was fascinated by the author's story of how the book got published and launched his literary career at a time when he was no longer a youngster.

It's a beautiful tale of a beautiful family and, through this book, I learned about the "conk" -- a hairstyle not favored by Mr. and Mrs. Watson (their oldest son gets one and, as a result, has his head shaved by his father!) but you may have seen prominent musicians who adapted this somewhat risky hair straightening style -- Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and others.

Then, from Mr. Curtis's tale, I learned that in 1963 a car could be fitted with a record player -- not an 8-track, not a tape player or CD player, but a real record player -- in the case of the Watsons, one that played 45s. (This so amazed me that I had to look it up on Wikipedia for verification!)

As the Watsons travel south from Flint, Michigan (where the author lived and grew up) to Birmingham, Alabama, we learn how America can be both beautiful and terrifying.

So the first two books were hits. Then I plunged into Wild Thorns by Sahar Khalifeh, translated from Arabic by Trevor LeGrassick and Elizabeth Fernea. Originally published in 1976, the story is timely -- a tale of Palestinians in the West Bank and their interactions with Israel.

When I finish reading this book I still have four more to go -- all seven for just twenty seven dollars (Canadian). Even if the next four are bombs, hey, I've gotten my money's worth. More than my money's worth.

So this is how I pick my summer reading. Unplanned. Uncertain. But often the overlooked books in Frenchys book bin turn out to be gems that widen my horizons and expose me to worlds I would never otherwise have lived. These are books I would never have discovered in my local book store or by following a reviewer's "Ten 'must reads' for Summer 2025." Now back to the books.