Every summer I reread Bonjour Tristesse.

Just like The Outsiders it was written by the author when she was a teenager. Its fantastic! I read it before I knew anything about French Cinema and I fell in love.

Here is a scene from the 1958 film:

Other books I habitually read during summer include:
The Chronicles of Narnia series.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
After college I added:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
and Ham on Rye by Bukowski.

I was a child of the public library system. I wanted to be a librarian when I was little and I longed to join all of the summer reading clubs that were posted up at school at the end of the year. There is something luxurious about laying outside by the pool with a good book, sleeping on the beach with a book across your eyes, or laying inside when its scandalously hot outside and oh-so-air-conditioned inside the house and you’ve got a comfortable chair. I liked riding bikes and building forts and all of that, but I was always content to sit with a book for hours on end. I wish we had time for such luxuries now that we’re grown.

I will re-read my “classics” this year, but it will just have to be between everything else.