My dear friend Songbird has produced a Friday Five very dear to my heart...I'd even been to the library this afternoon, clearly in preparation for thinking about just this topic. She writes...

Back in the day, before I went to seminary, I worked in the Children's Room at the Public Library, and every year we geared up for Summer Reading. Children would come in and record the books read over the summer, and the season included numerous special and celebratory events. As a lifelong book lover and enthusiastic summer reader, I find I still accumulate a pile of books for the summer.
This week, then, a Summer Reading Friday Five.

1) Do you think of summer as a particularly good season for reading? Why or why not?
Not sure I understand the question! Reading isn't a seasonal activity. It's a 24 hour a day, utterly essential, read as you breathe as you read way of life. Of course it's a summer activity. Why else would there be long grass under trees in the garden, if not to sit and read? What other purpose has that pool of sunlight on the terrace but to lure you into taking out a chair and a coffee and that book you were trying to put down after breakfast?.... But reading by the fire in winter....or while listening to birdsong in spring...or while waiting for autumn mists to clear....all equally delightful, nay essential.

2) Have you ever fallen asleep reading on the beach? Often in my youth, when the beach was part of every day life...Lying on my front in the sun, even the bumpiest shingle of Hastings beach couldn't always keep me awake.

3) Can you recall a favorite childhood book read in the summertime? When I was about 6 I read through all the Swallows and Amazons books one summer, while camping in the tent my parents had given me for my birthday...pitched at the bottom of the garden. I read curled up in my sleeping bag by the light of a ladybird torch, way after they believed me to be fast asleep.

4) Do you have a favorite genre for light or relaxing reading? I love detective fiction...Very taken at the moment with Susan Hill's entry into the genre, with her rather attractive policeman Simon Serallier. And good old Phil Rickman 's Merrily Watkins series too.

5) What is the next book on your reading list? Just started The Book Thief, as recommended by the World's Best Spir Dir....but also have a pile of amiable rubbish from the library in case I need variety. It includes a couple of Mavis Cheek novels, which are bound to be entertaining...