Marking My Summer with Movies and Books

Credit: Pixabay

Often, I try to mark my summers with a big screen movie. Summers are magical and they especially were when we were kids. And they’re still magical for us adult artists, and that includes writers. I remember my summer from when I was 9 because that’s when “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” premiered (1980) and my dad took my kid brother and I to see it. 

Even bad movies served as a landmark, or maybe more like a “timemark”, for some of my summers when I was a kid. I won’t forget how unamusing the fourth “Jaws” film, “Jaws: The Revenge”, was when I saw it on the big screen during the summer (1987) just before my junior year of high school. Still, it was an event that I shared with my younger brother that was characteristic of summer. Of course, I thought I would like the movie and so that’s why we went to see it. So even now as an adult, every summer I’ll go see a movie that I think I’ll like and then remember the summer for it regardless of whether I liked it or not. 

Unfortunately, this summer hasn’t had that great of a choice of movies that I’ve been willing to go see. “The Quiet Ones II” and “Black Widow” were ones I had been looking forward to but most of the theatres in my area have already taken them off. I didn’t see them while they were playing because I was not fully vaccinated for Covid-19 yet and didn’t want to risk contracting anything in a crowded theatre. And “Shang-Chi”, the martial arts adventure film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, won’t be in theatres until September 3rd. 

But it isn’t just movies on the big screen that serve as an event to remember a summer by. Other things that serve as that are books and libraries. When I was a kid, my summers were marked by going to the library and checking out books. My mom would drop me off while she would go shopping and I would explore the stacks. Like with a movie theatre, the cool air-conditioned interior of the library was an oasis from the blazing outdoor heat. 

Now, as an adult, I try to utilise the library during the summer. Fortunately, my town’s library opened back up in time for the season when California eased off of several of the Covid 19 safety laws back in June. Before, it was all drive-up; now we can go inside the building and browse and read at our leisure. The drive-up was useful, but I much more prefer looking through the books inside the library because it’s more of a spatial exploration than is looking for books at home on your computer screen. That latter is more of a cyber-spatial exploration, if you will.  

I went to the library last weekend and checked out N.K Jemison’s novel, “The City We Became”. What I’ve read so far has been really good. Neil Gaiman says that “The City” is Lovecraftian and Borgesian. (Which reminds me of last year’s summer read, “Lovecraft Country” by Matt Ruff, which I bought at an independently-owned bookstore in Davis and really liked.) Based on what I’ve read of “The City”, I think Gaiman is right: it has monsters of the totally alien quality of H.P. Lovecraft’s monsters and the surrealism of Jorge Luis Borges. 

So far, I’ve liked “The City We Became” so much I may buy a copy at that same bookstore in Davis, The Avid Reader, where I bought “Lovecraft Country” last summer. If I purchase a copy then I’ll return the library’s copy so it will maybe make someone else’s summer one to remember. After I’m done reading “The City”, I may even do a review of it here. So, it might be the book that marks my summer. 

Be here Wednesday for another Insecure Writers’ Support Group post. What movies and/or books have marked your summer?

Until next time . . .