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Do we save “big reads” for summer? More and more, I do. There’s more unbroken time, whether its outside on a cushy chaise in my Chicago backyard or on the dock/at the beach/in the boat at Lac Pythonga. Why more time? Simpler summer food at home and, at Pythonga, all meals come from the club. (Thank you, kitchen staff!)

Earlier this summer I swallowed whole Melville’s Moby Dick while I was in Pythonga. What a read! Exhausting, exhilarating.

More recently I brought Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter with me, a book I’d read when I was 14 and didn’t remember.

Fourteen? Who assigned that? The Scarlet Letter gives us a tasty triangle in Puritan New England: a woman won’t name the father of her child borne out of wedlock, the returned husband won’t claim her or the child, the town’s minister falls ill from his guilt — and is “cared for” by the husband, who is a healer.

It’s not an easy read, because Hawthorne’s language is dense, but there’s an immediate urgency — how will this play out? — as well as delightful descriptions of the willful child. Hester Prynne’s transformation from victim to feminist makes for a deeply satisfying read.

Next, I picked up Peter Nichols’ The Rocks, set on the sunny island of Mallorca. Its start is irresistible: two former lovers, in their 80s, run into each other on the road. They squabble, tussle, and fall into the sea together. Their paired deaths sets the story in motion, backwards 60 years through the life of the resort she runs and the farm he tends, the children they raise, various lovers. What terrible thing drove them apart? By the end we learn the brutal truth. A smart, engaging family saga.

Finally, because I’d seen it listed among the best American books chosen by international writers, I took up a slender volume by E.L. Doctrow, Sweet Land Stories. I’m glad I did. There are five and each will stay with me for a long time: they’re intimate portraits of darkly misguided Americans. We meet a stylish murderess who’s always one step ahead of the law, a couple that comes to love each other after kidnapping a baby, a cuckolded husband left behind in a religious cult. Flawless.

Happy summer. It ain’t over.