Summer Reading List

It's getting a little quiet on the internet now. We're entering the slow season. I tend to believe that online business is immune from seasonality, but August is the exception. With the heat and the slowness and the long days, my ideas are flowing, but not much is being produced. My notes are littered with half-written essays, snippets of sentences that may become something useful or interesting soon. But today, all I want to do is read.

I've fallen back into the research phase of my work, and there is no better time for it. The sun stays high so long, and it's so pleasurable to read without artificial light. My apartment has a skylight, a gift on these interminable days, forcing me to make use of the waking time.

New essays will come (and next week's ​podcast​ episode will give you a behind-the-scenes of my chaotic thought process when I'm working out ideas, in this case about online courses and their pedagogical issues), but after so many years of this work I'm finally ready to stop forcing summer, to stop pushing through when its not necessary, and to trust that the next thing will emerge.

It's painful, though. I don't want to pretend otherwise. Every time it feels like the well will be dry forever. That I'll never write another word. But every time, it comes back.

The best way to refill the well is to feed it. And, of course, it lives on words.

I am a very active reader, and in that respect the worst person to ask about how to read more because it comes easily to me. I usually read for about an hour in the morning with coffee, sometimes a book but often catching up on newsletters. During the day, I read between calls and with meals. I rarely watch TV unless I'm sick (not from some deep snobbery, but because I find it under-stimulating and can't sit still), which prompts impressive binging that catches me up quickly so I can continue to participate in society's shared cultural references. Of course, it has been sports climbing season, so I have watched hours of climbing competition streams on YouTube, often knitting or making friendship necklaces with the power screams in the background. But if i'm not watching climbing, then I usually read for a couple of hours before bed. It adds up, and I average almost two books per week.

It's much easier to read a lot when you have a lot of things to choose from. Folks who have a hard time picking up a book or article tend to have very firm ideas about what they should be reading. There's judgement, and a desire to make the most of their reading time. I do not do this. I am voracious in all directions, and value articles and essays and blogs as much as epic sci-fi as much as literary fiction as much as critical theory. Just, you know, read. (And my sister who is sitting next to me says to stop reading things you don't like! You don't have to finish a book! Be free!)

So here's my summer reading list, for you. Things I have read, am reading, will be reading. I'm nosy and love this kind of thing, and I hope I can send you down a rabbit hole or two that might create a new possibility in your work. Or just be fun. Enjoying reading a thing is reason enough to do it.