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Nicole Junkermann on Building a Reading List for the Rest of the Summer
A summer list is not a stack of titles so much as a set of intentions. Nicole Junkermann on how the choosing actually happens, and why the shape matters more than the names.
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Half the summer is still ahead, which is exactly the right amount to plan for and exactly the wrong amount to fill.
There is a particular pleasure in drawing up a reading list in the middle of July, when there is enough season left to be worth the trouble. Nicole Junkermann does it most years, and has come to care rather more about how the list is built than about which books end up on it. The titles change every summer. The method has stayed remarkably still.
Start with the shape, not the titles
Most lists fail because they begin with names. Someone recommends something, it goes down, then another, and by the end you have assembled a queue with no relationship to the weeks in front of you. Nicole Junkermann starts at the other end, with the shape of the season itself. How many long evenings are there, realistically? How much of it will be spent travelling, and how much at home? A list built to fit the summer you are actually going to have is worth three built for an imaginary one.
Match the book to the mood, the place and the hour
The right book is a question of fit rather than quality. A demanding one needs a clear head and a long sitting, which in practice means a morning, not the end of a tiring day. Something read on a train is interrupted every few minutes and needs to survive that. An evening outdoors, with the light going slowly, will take a book that unfolds at its own pace, and Nicole Junkermann saves those deliberately. The mood matters as much as the hour: no amount of good intention will make a heavy book work in a light week. This is where most summer lists quietly come apart, and where a little honesty at the planning stage pays for itself.
The slots worth filling
Rather than a list of titles, Nicole Junkermann keeps a list of slots, and lets the books arrive to fill them.
- One that is too long for any other season, and has been waiting for this one.
- One that can be finished in a single afternoon, for the day that needs a small victory.
- One you have read before, which is a different pleasure entirely and never a waste.
- One with no connection whatsoever to your work.
- One you fully expect to abandon, chosen precisely so that you can.
Leave the gaps in
The most common mistake is completeness. Nicole Junkermann leaves at least a third of the summer unplanned, because the best book of any season is usually the one that was not on the list: mentioned by a friend, found on a shelf in a rented house, picked up because the cover was interesting. A full list has nowhere to put that book, and so it goes unread. A list with gaps is not an unfinished list. It is a list that has left the door open, and the wider habit behind it is set out in how Nicole Junkermann chooses what to read next.
Then stop planning
A list is a beginning, not a promise. Once it exists, Nicole Junkermann puts it in the Reading Room and largely forgets about it, consulting it only at the awkward moment when one book ends and the next has not begun. The rest of the summer will do what it likes with it, and that is rather the point. The Notebook records what actually got read, which is never quite what was planned, and the slower weeks of mid-July tend to supply more reading hours than any list can anticipate.
More from Nicole Junkermann
For more from Nicole Junkermann, visit the Reading Room, the Travel Journal, the Notebook and the full profile of Nicole Junkermann.