Summer TBR

For no good reason, my habit is to create a summer TBR pile. Already being in possession of a TBR pile which I have zero chance of seeing the bottom of unless I live to be well past one hundred and I never buy a book again (the first condition is statistically unlikely and the second laughably impossible), I have no need of a summer TBR pile. Yet every summer, I create a new pile of books to read when I am outside. (I have written before about my love of reading outside. As I live in New York City, this only happens three or four months out of the year and takes place either on my balcony or when I go to the beach.)

Most years, my summer pile consists largely of what, in my mind, are beach reads, namely thrillers, mysteries, and maybe fantasy with a page turner-y quality. This year, I broke form and added non-fiction. I have been on a history kick lately, particularly ancient and medieval history, and I love very big books. Put those two together and you get, of course, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.

I recognize that no one in literary history has ever referred to Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a beach read. I wouldn’t either, at least not in public. It’s long, it’s dense, and considering the title gives away the ending to anyone who doesn’t already know what happened to the Roman Empire, presumably not a page turner. Yet somehow, it is. I have been absolutely blazing through it. Part of the reason is Gibbon’s writing. The eighteenth-century historian is a master of prose who could probably make tax records interesting. The other part is the history itself. The Roman Empire was basically a soap opera which ran even longer than Guiding Light and had actors every bit as interesting as the most dramatic day time TV villain. The history of it has everything you expect from a soap opera – lying, cheating, adultery, secret family members, and some of the most over-the-top divas in recorded history - plus epic battle scenes and enough dastardly political maneuvering to make Machiavelli sit up and take notice.

One month of summer remains and I have made a significant dent in the summer TBR pile, but I don’t know if I am going to finish Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Labor Day. (I read three or four books at the same time, depending upon my situation – in bed, on public transportation, in my living room when I should be cooking dinner for my family, etc., so I have a lot to work on.) I will make a concerted push in August, but if I don’t reach the finish line, it will become part of my winter TBR pile because I can’t put it down.