Summer books? What kind of animals are those????

With Summer and its promises of leisure time, come along lots of "summer books". Pages and pages of so said romance, adventures, bound to lead you on some dreamy journeys, while you are burning lobster-red like in some crowded beach. Yes, do not ask why, but I never felt attracted to "mass-tourist", chaters and Torremolinos doesn't sound paradise like to my ears...

Anyway, back to books... I never felt attracted to that kind of literature... The pinkish, sparkling, summer-like covers (why do they ALWAYS put a beach picture to embody summer???), all the blurb in cover page4... What's so summerish in that anyway?

However, I remember books I read during summer, and that still keep a perfume of holidays.... I was around 15, 16, or so... Our friends were leaving their big house (mansion-like, a swimming pool , a small lake and a Steinway in the louge), my parents and I were asked to pay some regular visits on their goods, so that we can deterr any thiefs around ^^ . And use the swimming pool and the terrasse at our heart's content. And as for myself, dive with holy happiness in their library....

The lounge had a big bay overlooking the garden, and the small lake, shadowed by fir trees. Facing the piano, a green sofa, and behind it, encasted in the wall, the library, all in white wood. And on the shelves, books, books, and again books. Pockets ones, Hardcover ones... Talking about painters, Musicians, philosophers... Classic authors such as Voltaire, Diderot, Bernardin de St Pierre, Descartes, Zola, Sartre, de Beauvoir, but also Goncourt ones, which names I forget... I spend countless hours, in the lounge when it rained, or near the pool when it was summer hot... I remember the sensation of peace when reading, and also the nervous heartbeats, when my fingers turned pages that were not mine, browsed a library that was not mine...

I always had that kind of game, still have: guessing a person's habits by the books he/she owns, he/she reads or by the pens he /she uses...Don't ask why, I think it just is... And when I was reading those neighbours books, I couldn't help but wonder about how my friend's mother was feeling about it... I remember one in particular, entitled "Les voleurs de beauté" ("the Beauty stealers")by Pascal Bruckner, it was about a couple deceiving, then makign prisoners young and beautiful women, to steal their energy and beauty. They enclosed those girls in a cave, and watched them dying away from their lounge. Some tubes liking the cave to the upper rooms enables those thief to "suck away " the youth spirit of their preys...... Kinda creepy, I tell you, but also enthralling, marvellous like a venenous flower..



When I think about that book, I can see myself eagerly reading. I can see the yellow cover, the easy-reading font, the blurb on the last cover page. And I think that as long as I live, that very book will always remind me of that summer, spent alone in between books and nature.

This is what are "Summer books" for me... Not your average best selling fiction, but a book, a story, an object that can bring back memories entrapped inside its pages, so vividly that it feels like yesterday.....