Summer Reading Series

Reviews & Interviews Editor Jackie Hedeman on reading (so, so many) books outside this summer.

My approach to summer reading is best described as Catholic Guilt meets All You Can Eat Buffet. I attempt to make up for the disappointing trickle of mid-semester pleasure reading by going on a rampage. Do I distinguish between fried chicken, broccoli, and chocolate-dipped strawberries? Only in terms of whether they fit on my plate, by which I mean: in my tote bag for a walk, in my carryon for a flight, on my Kindle as one of the ten checkouts permitted by the Columbus Public Library. So I’ve been reading YA. Middle-grade. Essays. Comics. Memoir. Plays. Excruciatingly realist fiction. Horror.
Here are the books I’ve read so far this summer:

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
The Hot l Baltimore by Lanford Wilson
George by Alex Gin
The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson
Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles Blow
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Carry On by Rainbow Rowel
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell
The Quick by Lauren Owen
A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Irritable Hearts by Mac McClelland
Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

I read nearly every book outside. Reading outside is what elevates summer reading from summer pleasure to summer joy. (In my case, this involves nail polish-stripping sunscreen and a mental list of shady benches.) I read outside in Columbus: on the OSU oval, in tiny Miller Park in Upper Arlington, at outdoor tables at Stauf’s and Starbucks, in the arboretum. I also read outside in Paris: in the Jardin des Tuileries, in the Place des Vosges, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in the Luxembourg Gardens, at Versailles, and in the Jardin du Palais Royal, which happens to be my favorite place on earth.

…

Associate Poetry Editor A.E. Talbot on the power of poetry for all ages and surprising word origin stories!

This summer, I’ve been working at Thurber House, a museum and creative writing education center which runs week-long writing camps for kids. Though one camper was convinced that a guest (the old woman who swallowed a fly) was NOT me in a costume, these are smart, smart kids. One obvious reason I love the MFA is that I get to work with others who are passionate about writing, and it was gratifying to watch second and third graders make those connections at their own level. Phone numbers were exchanged. Playdates were set. Who says writing is always solitary?

That’s all to say that part of my summer has been focused on writing prompts for eight- and nine-year-olds. And you know what? When I needed example poems, it was surprisingly fun to do the exercise myself. I’m not saying that I’ll be hitting the acrostics next time I get writer’s block, but it forced me to write in a direction that I normally would not, such as a poem with elaborate metaphors in every line. It’s out of control, but not in the worst way, and I got ideas from that exercise that might ferment into another poem.

…

Associate Fiction Editor Jess Rafalko talks dysfunctional family novels, Sideshow Bob, and the coming apocalypse.

This summer, I am trying to write a novel about a contemporary American family—and, consequently, have forbidden myself from reading any novels about contemporary American families. The Corrections has gone ignored on my bookcase for the past four summers like a dense and boorish dinner guest no one really wants to talk to, and there shall it remain: if I have chosen to work in one of the most formulaic subgenres of literary fiction, The Big Dysfunctional Family Novel, then I must do my best to ignore the extant narratives in that oft-derided, occasionally-distinguished milieu.    

I’ve even made a halfhearted gesture to avoid family-centered TV shows (and, let’s be real: I have spent far more time this summer watching TV than reading fiction), instead relying on grim procedurals like Law & Order: SVU and sexy procedurals like Castle and Grey’s Anatomy. I have not been able to give up The Simpsons, though; two nights ago I had an episode on as I was writing. To be fair, it was “Cape Feare,” the one featuring Sideshow Bob’s infamous encounter with a series of ill-placed rakes: an apt metaphor for my writing process, on most days.

…

Note from the editors: We’re kicking off our Summer Reading series! In this series, Journal editors talk about what they’re reading / watching / listening to / studying this summer. Read for recommendations, insight into our editorial staff, and a general good time. Our first post is from Cady Vishniac, an incoming Associate Fiction Editor. 

Right now, I’m allowing myself two novels, Ethan Canin’s A Doubter’s Almanac and Sunil Yapa’s Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist, as well as several thick academic texts about Jewish folklore. Later on this summer, I’m learning Yiddish at the six-week Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in New York, and I’m workshopping novel chapters with a classmate. I’m preparing two or three stories for my upcoming semester, fighting about politics on the internet, writing a new group of poems and a couple flash pieces, submitting like there’s no tomorrow, visiting family, training to be a composition instructor, gardening, attending the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and making Lego castles with my daughter, all in no particular order.

Still, the bulk of my alone time is actually focused on other writers’ unpublished fiction, their submissions to the lit mags for which I screen or their workshop stories. Since my last class of the semester I’ve I polished off the hundred-plus fiction submissions we received at Reservoir, where I am the fiction editor, as well as the hundred-fifty or so I was assigned at Raleigh Review, where total fiction subs were closer to three hundred-fifty. I’ve been working on copy edits with the four authors chosen at Raleigh Review and will soon start revisions, copy edits, and proofreading at Reservoir. I’m also due to get a large batch of fiction subs from The Journal any day now.

…