Summer Reading

Much to my amazement, I'm really enjoying The Scarlet Letter.

It was the bane of my high school and then college years, and I fell asleep reading it to my Armenian daughter during our first year hosting. She was required to read it for her American Lit. class, but didn't have the English skills to conquer the language, so we spent night after night reading through it. And I'd doze every time, until I felt her gentle nudge on my knee or arm, at which point I'd startle and try again.

Did I really have to be forty-eight to finally "get" this story?

This time around, it's little Pearl who's caught my attention. I don't think I allowed myself the pleasure of delving into her surprisingly modern portrayal, or Hawthorne's allowing a more natural take on children than Hester would have probably assumed in her day. Pearl is not seen, as children typically were in Puritan times, as a little adult, but rather she is left to be a child, and an ill-behaved one, at that. Which also pulls me in as a mother. I'm looking at Hester in a new light.

But where are the beach books?

Of my current list, the only beach book type is Bangkok Haunts, and yet that, too, is complicated and dense in its own way. Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the Bangkok detective who is at the heart of Burdett's Bangkok series, makes the series for me. The subject matter is often more raw than I would normally read or enjoy. Yet the themes of cross-cultural misunderstanding, and Sonchai's take on the West versus Thai Buddhist culture has me fascinated. Hence The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism...

But that's not particularly light reading, either. So, through Sonchai, I've become fascinated with learning more about Buddhism. But I'm also trying not to get sucked into too many directions so I can focus on The Courage to Write, recommended by my friend Charity.

And then there are The Nick Adams Stories, which I'm still sorting through for American Lit.

Where are the hours in the day?

Juxtaposition

We live near a gorgeous lake, perfect for swimming and for cutting the heat on a Michigan July afternoon.

The drive out there is filled with farmland and lacy patterns of light from overhanging trees. It's both restful and good for summer music and the path sends you on to the lake in the proper, vacation frame of mind.

When you arrive at the lake, you walk from a dusty parking lot to the sound of happy screams and the low murmur of adults, picnicking, the smells of grilling franks and burgers, and the sights of flashes of brightly-colored bathings suits flying in and out of the water and across the hill opposite. There is a sprayscape, which is the source of much of the screaming, and there are picnic benches available for both shade-lovers and sun-worshippers.

So in the midst of this idyll, I sit reading about the tortured souls in The Scarlet Letter - Dimmesdale, Chillingworth and Hester dance their tarantella of doom against the background of the bright sunshine and happy play, while my son and K splash through the water like dolphins.

I think I am being punished for assigning this to my students over the summer. It really was done as a favor, so they don't have to kill themselves deciphering this over the first weeks of the shortened semester, but it's not beach reading.

I guess that maybe if Dimmesdale and Hester had lakes in their lives, instead of the rocky shore of Boston harbor, and maybe if they had a few summer afternoons together, instead of the harsh ministrations of Chillingworth/Prynne, maybe things would have turned out differently.

Can't you just see Pearl, in a bright scarlet tankini with hot pink stripes, zipping in and out of the water and joining scores of children screaming in the spray?