summer school!
almost comfortable, stealing pleasure, + a good watermelon salad
I love it when you:
hey-ho,
Happy almost Fourth of July! I hope you’ll do something fun with people who love you. 💛
Summer reading lists like this, and this, make me feel as if I have an embarrassment of riches at my fingertips. Lists + the glow of summer are meant to reignite our love of reading with froth and family and mystery, to give us light and lively books to fall into, because summer comes with long afternoons punctuated by the shush of small waves on a lake or the shush of an oscillating fan in your darkened living room.
As a kid, part of my summer meant school. It was the only free place my mom could send me while she worked. I had matching short sets and white sandals, a thermos of chocolate milk and a bruised peach, perhaps there were a dozen of us kids, the poor kids, or the academically challenged kids, a breakfast club before there was such a thing. The teachers usually had little skin in the game, having drawn the short straw to be the breathing adult at the front of the classroom. They handed out long division worksheets or made us diagram sentences while they propped their feet on the desk and did the Big Book of NYTs Crossword Puzzles. Bored flies buzzed. Yellow sunlight marked the floor in dirty rectangles. And I felt so much freedom! Summer school was to me a Club Med vacation. I whizzed through the assignments and then read, anything I wanted. Curled in a chair at the back of the classroom, I inhaled all the Little House books, I devoured Harriet the Spy, A Wrinkle in Time, Black Beauty, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler, and The Chronicles of Narnia. It was a safe place to escape into a different life.
Today when summer reading suggestions land in my inbox from The Atlantic or a friendly instagram, I feel a frisson of that childhood freedom. Articles about slimming swimsuits? You’re dead to me! A shared summer reading list feels as if someone exciting is flirting with me from across the room. My best reading experience is no longer a summer school classroom. A beach chair on the sand or near any body of water, in a damp swimsuit, with an umbrella overhead is my optimal choice.
What’s your best summer reading experience?
And, here’s an excerpt of a wonderful summer poem, please click this link for the entire thing!
Summer in a Small Town
by Tony Hoagland:….Summer, when the living is easy
and we store up pleasure in our bodies
like fat, like Eskimos,
for the coming season of privation.All August the Ferris wheel will turn
in the little amusement park,
and screaming teenage girls will jump into the river
with their clothes on,
right next to the No Swimming sign.
Trying to cool the heat inside the small towns
of their bodies,
for which they have no words;
obedient to the voice inside which tells them,
“Now. Steal Pleasure.”
Happy Summer!
read:
In the vein of “Now. Steal Pleasure” I offer you this surprising (or perhaps not) idea: Read a cookbook as if it’s a short story collection or a book of essays. Dip in before sleep. So much better than scanning the news!
SIMPLE VIETNAMESE FOOD TO COOK AT HOME, by Uyen Luu is gorgeous and I’m planning all sorts of summer dinner parties! In the introduction, Luu tells us that the Vietnamese way of saying how are you is to ask, “Have you eaten rice yet?” She goes on to say that life in her family is centered on the enjoyment of good food. I agree!! Good food, good people, laughs and conversation around the table are absolutely what I live for.
First thing I’ll make? Bahn Mi Sammies. Chicken Salad w/Sugar Snap Peas and Vietnamese Coriander & Shallots is winking at me. And, for sweets I’m thinking Coconut Rice Pudding w/Ginger Syrup and Grilled Peaches. Doesn’t that dessert sounds like a love story?
Wishing you so much joy around the summer table…
For our next r.w.e. book group we will be reading ELIGIBLE, by Curtis Sittenfeld, which of course is a re-telling of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, by Jane Austen, which I will be reading as well. Don’t forget the fab PBS limited series of P&P with Colin Firth if you need a fun refresher.
We meet on zoom, 14 July from 9:30 - 11:00 pacific time. The book group is a perk for paid subscribers and let me tell you we are a lively bunch! Do consider joining us. A paid subscription is a mere $5 a month, or the cost of one coffee!
Check my read.write.eat. Bookshop Store, where you will find many of the books I've recommended in the newsletter. Buying books from my shop is a way you can be a friend to the newsletter.
write:
WRITE YOURSELF OUT OF A CORNER, by Alice LaPlante, introduced me to this great poem by Lydia Davis, “I’m Pretty Comfortable, But I Could Be a Little More Comfortable.” Okay, what a fantastic title! It’s a mini rant about how we forget how great we have it!
an excerpt:
I’m tired
The people in front of us are taking a long time choosing their ice cream.
My thumb hurts.
A man is coughing during the concert.
The shower is a little too cold.
The cuff of my sweater is damp.
My navel orange is dry.
I mean, come on! We have opposable thumbs, so they hurt a little! We’re at a concert! A navel orange? How lucky!! I am so tickled by all of this because I see myself in nearly every line! I too forget that I’m pretty comfortable. You can find the poem in Davis’s collection, CAN’T AND WON’T.
As a prompt, I made the start of my own list…
My latte isn’t hot enough.
My husband chews really loud.
Our dog is sitting on someone else’s lap.
I have age spots on my face.
It takes a long time for the smart tv to connect to the internet.
Writing is hard!
And…
It is. Writing is hard. Aren’t we all lucky that we get to do it? Aren’t we lucky that we have these faulty and amazing and clumsy and beautiful words to try and express something we shouldn’t even be able to express on the page? We get to share our internals! We get to be intimate from afar with strangers and to perhaps make someone we don’t even know feel better.
I also know that we don’t always get to share what we write. There are gatekeepers that make publishing so painful, so difficult. We writers strive to create something true and funny and beautiful and the gatekeepers often say no. It’s as if we baked a wonderful cake. We want so hard! To share, to watch someone take a bite and say, ‘Yum!’
All I have for you today is, try to unplug from the part of your writing life over which you have no control. Plug into how good it feels to express yourself on the page. Writing is hard! I feel you. We are so lucky to do it.
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eat:
Remember the Summer Bingo Cards I made for you? (Yes, I know there are typos…) In an effort to help you cross off a square on the Eat Bingo card, here’s my fav watermelon salad.
Watermelon Salad
4c mixed diced watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe (Make sure they are perfectly ripe. Here’s how to tell.) I choose to go heavy on the watermelon. Also, perfectly ripe, halved cherry tomatoes are a good substitute for one of the melons, as are ripe peaches.
2c peeled and seeded cucumber cut to same size as melon
Salt to taste
1T lemon or lime zest
2T freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice
2T chopped fresh mint
2T chopped fresh parsley
3 oz feta cheese, crumbled
½t Aleppo pepper or 1 serrano chile, minced
2T extra virgin olive oil
Optional addition of pumpkin seeds
Combine everything in a bowl and toss. That’s it!
Stanley!
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Tell your people you love them, and take good care of your skin.
xN
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