Opinion: The best ‘beach reads’ and how to find them
What does the term “beach read” mean to you? For me, it evokes a particular summer holiday I went on at the age of about 14. My brothers and I were hooked on the fiction of Stephen King, and we took a shoebox full of his early novels to the rented beach house. We ploughed through them at the rate of about one a day, trading volumes when we were done.
“The books we read in childhood don’t exist any more,” observed the Polish writer Bruno Schulz. “They sailed off with the wind, leaving bare skeletons behind.” Moreover, it has to have girth. It should be chunky enough to sustain you for at least two days. It should be a book you feel you’re living in even when you’re away from it.It shouldn’t be too highbrow, either. Years ago, I made the error of taking Thomas Mann’son a beach holiday. What was I thinking? Reading a 1200-page Penguin Classic on a beach is like ordering a steak dinner at a drive-thru. It doesn’t work.
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