But it's too bright to read at the beach

I remember summers past according to the books read during those salubrious months of repose. Roger Angell's The Summer Game was the year before sixth grade. Stephen King's On Writing was three decades later, the New York summer. The Grapes of Wrath filled one afternoon and the next morning in the June of '87. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables consumed parts of a couple of summers, during neither of which did I come close to finishing the 1,463-page Signet Classic paperpack edition. Not counting 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, which I just picked up at a Goodwill for $3, here are some others I've cracked open or will soon.