Ahh summer. The beach, the water, the weather, and if your like me the reading.Now many people get summer reading confused with actual reading, but I am going to tell you it most certainly is not. There are rules to follow when reading during the summer. For instance, if you are going out to the beach with a copy of John Milton's Paradise Lost or Dante's Divine Comedy you are going about summer reading all wrong. This is not a time for smart and deep reading that requires you to pay attention to every detail and even actually follow the plot. No this is a time for those cheap Wal-Mart books you pass up most of the year, but once again you have to be careful to what you pick up even in Wal-Mart. Thats why I have decided to provide you with a list of what to look for when choosing your summer reading material.
1) For the first rule and one of the most important rules is IT MUST BE MINDLESS. I mean mindless in that while reading you can actually daze off for a few pages and when you come too you still know exactly whats going on, but at the same time you have to somewhat enjoy what you are reading no one likes to be trapped in a boring book.... especially in summer.
2) Some character must either be killed off or have sex during the first 50 pages. Violence whether we like it or not is interesting and one of the best hooks a story can provide. Sex is also in the same category (and this is fine by itself if your the type that does not enjoy violence.) However, if you can find a book where someone has sex then goes out and kills someone or even gets killed during sex you have found a jewel amongst the summer reading books. I remember reading a book once that I found from the dollar tree where a man has sex with some random woman from a bar, and then 2 pages later the random woman gets murdered in the streets. The man happened to be a detective and he wound up trying to chase down the random womans killer for the rest of the book. This was a great book. Not only was it mindless and I probably only read 30 pages in the whole 200 something, but it started off with such a zinger of an intro I could not put it down. Books like these are few and far between so if you happened to find one... spread the wealth.
3) A bear or some form of dangerous creature must make an appearance in the novel
(bonus points if a bear and another creature actually fight in the novel) I say bears, because well bears are really flipping interesting. They are like the modern day T-Rex only much more badass, because they don't have stumpy arms. From my experience Bears make novels better. By appearance I mean the bear has to eat someone, the protagonist or the antagonist or even a random bystander. Who he eats is unimportant and beside the fact just so long as he does eat someone. I have even found that the bear does not even have to be a mainpoint of the novel. In some books bears come in merely to devour some random sap, but soon shuffle off in the next page to go do important bear things. This is perfectly fine. But I am not biased against another creature (sharks, velociraptors, anacondas, dragons, tigers, Minotaurs, Giant Robots, Aliens, Godzilla, even a gorilla) just so long as they follow the same rules as the bear. Once again bonus points if one of the listed creatures comes into the novel along with a bear.... and they fight. Then you have the best summer reading material ever.When I was 8 years old I found a book on my parents bookshelf that seemed interesting enough, because of the mention of an unknown creature on the back of the book. So I read it, but soon found it to be a very boring and sappy love drama. I never wanted to put a book down so bad in all my life, but for some reason I stuck with it and good thing too. When I reached page 100 this sappy love story turned into a hunt for a mutant-shark-man-fish (I kid you not) that was ravaging the village that the main characters resided in. After this novel I knew my summer reading days would never be the same.
4) There must be a beach either a picture of a beach or the mention of a beach somewhere in the novel. Since this is a book for the summer and summer entitles beaches, so should your novel. A beach is a must if you can't be there you should at least be reading about one. Now this throws a wrench in rule number 3, but thats why I revised it to include any creature other than a bear. Bears don't frequent beaches near as much as they should, but beaches are prime locations for another lovable man eater The Shark!
5) Secret agents. I figured this rule kinda goes without saying as it is common knowledge that secret agents are awesome, but I guess I should mention just how cool they are. I mean just look at Ian Fleming's character James Bond. Arguably one of the coolest men in the entertainment industry next to Sean Connery... and guess what Sean Connery was James Bond! Thats saying something if the character you are playing is almost if not cooler then you are. This is why James Bond books are perfect summer reading, minus the fact that most... errr all of them contain no bears. (however they do contain sharks.) Don't worry though I am not encouraging you to find a secret agent on par with James Bond, but as long as the novel contains a secret agent even if he is mentioned in the liner notes (or there is a James Bond reference.) There are many ways to fulfill this requirement.I guess I am going to call it quits after rule 5 mainly because I feel like the rest of the rules would be just really cool things like; David Bowie, Space travel, Scantly clad women, etc... but I don't believe there is a book out there that would include them all. So I will just keep it with the 5 golden rules to finding summer reading.
Anyways I wish everyone the best in finding summer reading material. If you manage to go 5/5 in the rules then you have it made. 4/5 is very good, 3/5 is not too bad its acceptable, but 2/5 and you might as well go see a movie if you want to be entertained.
-Thom
(I believe Patirck Macmanus did an article such as this, and if you have enjoyed mine you should look his up a very top notch writer.)
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