Nicole Junkerman
Seasonal
Into July: A High-Summer Reading and Travel List for the Warmest Weeks
As June turns to July and the year reaches its warmest weeks, a reading and travel list shaped for high summer, long light, and the slowest of days.
As June turns to July and the year reaches its warmest weeks, a reading and travel list shaped for high summer, long light, and the slowest of days.
July is high summer, the part of the year when the heat settles in and the days reach their fullest. The mornings come early, the evenings hold their warmth, and the whole season seems to slow to a pace that suits a reader perfectly. Where late June still carries the first flush of the long days, July deepens them, and Nicole Junkerman thinks of these warmest weeks as the heart of the reading year, when there is time and light enough for almost any book you care to open.
This, like its companion lists, is a list of moods rather than titles. The aim is to read and travel in a way that matches high summer, generous and unhurried, so you can choose your own pages and still keep faith with the season. The warmest weeks reward a particular kind of slowness, and the books and journeys that suit them are worth choosing with care.
What high summer asks for
The hottest part of the year invites the kind of reading that asks little and gives much. A long, immersive novel you can sink into across a string of warm afternoons is high summer's natural book, the heat itself an argument for staying still and reading on. There is no better season for the doorstop you have been saving, the saga you can live inside for weeks, the book that rewards being given real time rather than snatched minutes. The journal's piece on summer reading and the long afternoon makes that case, and July is when it comes fully into its own.
High summer also softens the appetite for anything heavy or demanding. These are the weeks for reading purely for pleasure, choosing books by pull rather than duty, and letting the season decide the pace. If a book is a chore in July, it is the wrong book; the right one carries you along as easily as the warm air. The Reading Room gathers the spirit of this slower reading, and the earlier spring reading list shows the same by-mood approach for the cooler months behind us.
Travelling through the warmest weeks
July is also the great travelling month, and high summer reads particularly well on a slow journey. A few unhurried days in one place, with long evenings free and the heat encouraging stillness, give a book the room it needs and give the journey a quieter shape. Nicole Junkerman favours staying longer and moving less in these weeks, letting a single place become familiar rather than racing through several, with a book always within reach for the warmest part of the day.
The slow journey and the high-summer book belong together. An afternoon too hot for sightseeing is an afternoon made for reading in the shade, and the trip is the better for it. The whole Travel Journal is built around this unhurried way of going, and the argument for it runs deepest in the piece on slow travel, which is the natural companion to any high-summer plan.
Letting July be slow
The gift of high summer is permission to slow down entirely. The year asks less of us in these weeks, and there is wisdom in answering in kind, letting the warmest days go gently, giving the long light to a book and the slow hours to nothing in particular. To read deep into July, with the heat outside and a good book in hand, is one of the season's purest pleasures, and it needs no justification beyond itself.
So as June turns to July, let the warmest weeks be slow ones. Choose books for pleasure and length, travel in a way that leaves the afternoons free, and let high summer do what it does best. When you want another thread to follow, the front door of this journal is always open, and the Nicole Junkerman home page is the gentlest place to begin again.
Questions readers ask
What should you read in high summer?
Long, immersive books chosen for pleasure: the saga or doorstop novel you have been saving for weeks with time and light enough to give it. Nicole Junkerman lets the warmest weeks be unapologetically about enjoyment and length.
How does July suit slow travel?
The heat of high summer rewards staying longer and moving less, with the warmest afternoons given over to reading in the shade. A few unhurried days in one place leave long evenings free for a book and let the journey settle into a quieter shape.
Explore more of the journal: Reading Room and Travel Journal, or return to the Nicole Junkerman home page.