reading syllabus for summer
a week-by-week reading syllabus for june, july, and august: some rereads, a lot of new books, and a good mix of fiction and nonfiction.
I have done nothing all summer, but wait for myself to be myself again.
Two of my biggest identities are being an avid reader and a chronic planner. I thrive on structure and organizing things into categories. If you are like me, you’ll know that the purest form of happiness and peace sometimes comes from neurotically cataloging things. After having a sort of nostalgic epiphany, I decided to model my reading list like a college syllabus this year, or at least give myself a few themes and a general sense of what I want to learn from books (fiction and nonfiction alike). I’ve been on a mission to revive my intellectual curiosity and meaning in the books I read, so mindfully choosing a curation of books based on a specific season or theme has been massively helpful.
Obviously, in classic me fashion, I’m making a new syllabus each season because if you’re not consuming media seasonally, what are you doing? Everything is so fun when you’re living according to season, I promise.
Anyway, here is the syllabus I made for myself for summer (June-August), with a bunch of stills from some summer movies. Here are some article recommendations for you if you like literature!
Also, if you live in the southern hemisphere, here is my winter syllabus for you:
SUMMER SYLLABUS 2025
The world has become drenched in green and I get drenched in sweat by walking five minutes, which means that summer has arrived. My hair becomes a humidity indicator in the summertime, morphing into a curly untamable mess. I know I say this every season, but summer is truly the best reading season.
It’s so versatile; the slow metamorphosis of nature, from pastel tones to vibrant green in June, to the inescapable world drenched in every shade of green in July and the low hum of bugs on a hot summer night, to the late summer melancholy of August. The books I read in June are completely different from the books I read in August, when I am patiently waiting for the weather to cool down a little in anticipation for autumn. Oddly to me, summer is the only season that doesn’t feel monochrome or linear to me (spring is optimistic, autumn is cozy, winter is gray).
Summer also feels like the only season that is filled with expectations, one that needs a plethora of adjectives in front of it. Despite our attempts to generalize and aestheticize and label the season to the exact sort of one-tone vibe that one believes fits their personality (“hot girl summer”, “tomato girl summer”, “girlhood summer”), summer stubbornly simply stays unpredictable and contradictory and terribly hot. I think we would all be in a better place if we just let summer be what it is: a season filled with a languid sun that is stubborn to set, a world that comes alive in the daytime and distills into a soft dusk where time stretches into slow sunsets for us to finally breathe.
Personally, summer always starts off on a hopeful note for me, carrying the legacy of the boundless optimism I have in spring. In June, I love reading short and light literary fiction or classics filled with love and romance. In July, as the humidity skyrockets, I veer towards hazy books set in the mid-century or something that reminds me of childhood nostalgia. And in August, which I always call my “late summer special” month, I find myself wanting books to haunt me like a ghost, to drown every word I read in melancholy (or let it drown me, possibly).
film recommendations: late summer melancholy
We are officially into mid-August, which means it’s officially late summer. And the perfect way to celebrate late summer is by watching my favorite genre of film: melancholy, quietly stunning movies.
My themes and specific characteristics in books that I am searching for this month are NYRB classics, essay collections about loneliness, minimalist writing, melancholic plots, relationship fiction with no happily ever afters, hazy mid-century books set in the Californian desert, the rose colored glasses of childhood nostalgia, books that feels like water cascading, quiet stream of consciousness.
Here are the books that I am planning on reading for the three months of 2025’s summer, divided by week. They’re a good mix of new books, rereads, and books I finished halfway that I want to return to. Feel free to follow along and discuss!