Summer Reading?

This time of year its traditional for newspapers to run articles on recommendations for "summer reading".  NPR's Talk of the Nation, before NPR cancelled it, used to have a great summer episode on the topic.  I like the lists, and I liked the radio treatment of the topic.  I'm starting to see those articles show up in the press now.  But I have to wonder, how much summer reading really goes on anymore?

I love to read, and read all the time.  I love to write also, which is likely self evident.  But in our modern hectic lives, I really wonder if the institution of "summer reading" remains.

I've been reading a lot recently, but that's because I've been in airports, airplanes and hotels a lot recently, traveling for work.  One of the things I really like about traveling is that I get to read a lot.   But that type of travel isn't the summer trip to the beach type of travel.

 

World War Two era poster advocating staying at home for vacation, to reduce the burden on wartime rail transportation.  This vacationer is reading the newspaper, but a shelf of books and his radio is right behind him.

Summer reading as an institution is strongly associated with "lazy" summer days.  But do those still exist?  Perhaps they do.  A person tends to view the world through his own experiences, and perhaps summer is a time of relaxation, including reading relaxation, more than I realize.  I hope so, as otherwise those summer reading lists are sort of a relic of a bygone era, reflecting a once less hurried state of being.