frankie's summer book reading guide

At this time of year, one needs no further reminder that it's Christmas - the season of shopping and chaos and presents and fermented resentment. The reminders are everywhere: in the tacky yet emotion-inducing decorations, the fairy lights, the chocolate-coated marshmallow Santas that turn up in the supermarket for $7 a packet and then when unsold (afterall, I can only afford so many) get sent back to the factory and recycled in to marshmallow Easter bunnies.

But by this time in the season, you're probably a little tired of splurging on other people and have become deserving of a little giving of your own. How about a nice book or eight? May we recommend gift wrapping them for yourself too? Often when purchasing anything for myself I get it gift-wrapped. Then my 15 cats and I can sit around on the weekend slowly opening wonderful presents from all of our friends. Sometimes I also splurge on those special tins of tampons. But maybe this summer you should focus on reading those books that are still sitting on your bookshelf from years ago instead of purchasing newbies.

As a girl I loved, loved, Ann M. Martin's series The Babysitter's Club. I never berated myself at that age for loving trash. I was beyond ego. And that is what I am this summer as well. If you feel like it, read Gone, Girl by Gillian Flynn, or any book from the Amazon recommends from 2012 list. Read a top 10 book from 1999, read Bridget Jones' Diary or The Devil Wears Prada, read Shantaram or Cloudstreet or Playing Beattie Bow. Read what makes you happy because that's all reading should be. It shouldn't be a competition between friends and co-workers over who has read the most highfalutin titles.

I recently moved from a very literary and serious publishing house to one where I work on rural romances, love stories set on farms, in the outback, on bush stations. I work on crime and thrillers. The covers of the books i work on have embossing, gold foil and pink, pink hues. And I have learnt to embrace this kind of book, to revel in the romp. I even shelved my ego long enough to buy my boyfriend The Big Book of Legs to add to his way-too-big erotica collection. And it felt good to walk to the counter with a book with a pair of gams on the front and a whole sea of crotches on the inside. Not a literary classic to be seen in my basket: just porn.

Cutting-edge as I am, this summer I am finally getting around to reading the most written about, lauded, torn-down and dissected book of... 2010 and 2011. Like Freedom by Johnathan Franzen. And I'm not ashamed to be so far behind the pack or to be reading 'that' book. I paid a good $9.95 for it on the Readings Bookstore bargain table about eleven months ago and goddamn I'm gonna make that ten bucks count.

Sometime in 2010 I bought Richard Ford's The Sportswriter and Independence Day. I read the former, loved it but never made it to the latter. It's in my bag for summer 2012. 200+ pages in, and I'm back in love with Ford. Loneliness, failed marriages, random outbursts and sporting halls of fame have never been so funny, so brutal and so addictive. Seriously. While I'm on a roll with my white, male, middle-life crisis literature, I might finish my John Updike omnibus that has been serving as a platter for my asthma medication for the last two years.

Anne Hathaway. Babe. Serious babe. Cut all her hair off, make her an 18th century hooker, knock all her teeth out and she's even hotter. This boxing day will see the release of Les Mis the movie. This is the chance to read the book. Seriously, this is one of my favourite books of all time. It's epic, it's intense, it's heartbreaking. And seriously, who doesn't have an ambitiously purchased op-shop copy of this sitting on their shelf? Read it, for god's sake.

Aside from recycling books you've bought and never read, and please do not try to tell me that there are none of these in your house (if that's the case you aren't buying enough books or you are one of those speed readers, and as such, stop reading because I simply do not trust you people), all of that aside, I am designating this a summer of reading without ego. Read the Star Trek omnibus if you want, read cookbooks, read Lace by Shirley Conran, re-read The Pelican Brief, god knows it was awesome the first time. Read bestsellers, Arnold Schwarznegger's autobiography or a collection of Kerouc's works, if that's what gets you through a balmy afternoon.

I knew a person once who was the most well-read person: he had all the classics covered and history, economics, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, he'd even read the Wealth of Nations, but he was a terribly mean person. And lonely too. The point is twofold, one: he was an asshole. Two: don't ever be foodshamed or bookshamed by anyone. Who gives a fuck. If reading becomes a chore put down the book and go to the cinema or paint your nails or iron your clothes for the week ahead. Never be guilted into the act of reading or into committing to a particular book. As long as you're reading something at some point and you're enjoying it, you're going to be okay. You're going to be okay.

Merry Christmas, from Kirsty, Stacey, Dawn, Mallory, Claudia, Mary Anne, Alice for this photo, and me.