What's A Summer Book?

Plus: Ryan Ken, 'Zola,' and What's Making Us Happy! [View this email online]( [Pop Culture Happy Hour]( by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when the Oscars got a [crop of new friends](. It was the week when Yale's drama school [went tuition-free](. And it was the week when Julianne Moore [wanted nothing to do with]( the idea of "aging gracefully." Opening Argument: What's A Summer Book? When my own book came out a couple of years ago, it was a summer book, literally, in that it came out in June. It was also a summer book in common parlance, in that it was relatively light in tone and had what you might call a domestic setting. "Summer book" and "beach read" came up a lot. But what is a summer book, anyway? A summer book is just ... a book you read in the summer. If you read Pride and Prejudice in the summer, that's a summer book. If you read Beloved in the summer, that's a summer book. Same with beach reads -- you want to take the F volume of the encyclopedia to the beach? That's a beach read. (Do people still know what encyclopedias even were? Never mind.) There exists a kind of blurry and shifting notion of a summer book or a beach read, where it's not too serious, maybe has romance, maybe has beautiful settings, or maybe has mystery elements that don't conclude with too much bleakness. But there's not really any reason why that needs to be the case. Because the idea of a summer book is, I think, born out of the idea of summer vacation. It can be hard to find time to read. It can be hard to prioritize reading, given all the other flashing and beeping and glowing things in our lives, not to mention, you know, other people. For a lot of people, summer is still the most appealing time to go somewhere different, to get away from work, to maybe try to disconnect a little. So a summer book is just the book you read for pleasure when you finally take a little time for yourself and feel no obligation to justify either internally or externally how you spent your day. And if that's the case, then the notion of the summer book can apply to any book, really, because it's simply about the fact that time to read, for a reader, is a gift. And that's the case whether you finally have the time to read a sudsy romance or whether you finally have time to dig into a big biography or a piece of history. (I have been on a cruise ship exactly once, and I read Rick Perlstein's 900-page Nixonland.) Whether it happens in the literal, calendar-defined summer or not, the time you give yourself for reading is your literary summer. So get yourself a summer book. But more important, get yourself a summer. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- We Recommend: Julie Salamon's book The Devil's Candy, about the making of the movie The Bonfire of the Vanities, is a favorite of mine. I was delighted to hear that Salamon herself was making and narrating a new season of the Turner Classic Movies podcast [The Plot Thickens]( which tells the story in podcast form. The first episode is entertaining -- and just as juicy as the book. One of my [favorite recent Twitter follows]( is Ryan Ken, a master of the "looks easy to get right, is actually hard to get right" captioned video comedy format. Their stuff is often not just funny, but provocative and insightful. Last weekend, I binge-watched the HBO MAX (originally BBC) [show All That Glitters]( which is meant to be the jewelry-making equivalent of The Great British Baking Show or The Great Pottery Throwdown or the glass-blowing show Blown Away. While it didn't thrill me quite as much as some comparable programs do, it was a very enjoyable afternoon of viewing, and I know a lot more about bracelets than I used to. The terrific actor John Benjamin Hickey [talked to the terrific writer]( Dave Holmes for Esquire about getting older as a gay man, and their conversation is a great read. What We Did This Week: [Zola image]( A24 Films On Monday, Aisha and I [wrapped up our discussion]( about the Fast & Furious franchise with our friends Sam Sanders and Ayesha Rascoe. [On Tuesday]( Glen spoke to Margaret Willison and Christina Tucker about Loki. [Aisha wrote about Zola]( and [on our Wednesday episode]( she talked about it with Mallory Yu, Jourdain Searles, and Sidney Madden. On Thursday, [we celebrated summer]( by revisiting an episode where Glen and Stephen talked to Gene Demby and Margaret Willison about memories of amusement parks. [And on Friday]( Aisha and Stephen talked to Audie Cornish and Ari Shapiro about the terrific concert film Summer Of Soul. I [wrote up some recommendations]( of things you might want to try out in July, including both movies and TV, old and new. And Stephen can be found, as he so often can, over at NPR Music's [New Music Friday](. What's Making Us Happy? Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - What's making Audie happy: [Sex/Life]( - What's making Ari happy: [Jean Smart’s renaissance]( including Hacks, Mare of Easttown, and Watchmen - What's making Aisha happy: [Jay.nedaj’s Instagram]( - What's making Stephen happy: The NPR Music blog [Now Playing]( and NPR Music's [best of the year so far]( including Arooj Aftab's Vulture Prince --------------------------------------------------------------- Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. --------------------------------------------------------------- What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: [pchh@npr.org](mailto:pchh@npr.org?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback) Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can [sign up here](. Looking for more great content? [Check out all of our newsletter offerings]( — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! 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