From the grey (OK, only some days), air-conditioned comfort of Guardian Towers, we want to hear about your summer reading list – and see it, in its holiday context. Perhaps you're packing some of the best holiday reads of the year as recommended by top authors? Or perhaps you're taking this as a chance to catch up on your piles of "to be read" books.
We’ve seen your shelfies, and now we’re after your sand-filled pages – and your travelling books in front of foreign cityscapes, jungles, mountains, nearby beaches – or wherever your summer is taking you, even if it's just the tube.
We’re also interested in your packing logistics. How frustrating that when you will finally get the time to read The Goldfinch, you can't carry it unless you’re ready to come home with a hernia. Indeed, some of the more obviously summery novels tend to be mammoth volumes hard to carry around in a bag … Have you switched to a digital format to save space, as some of our readers discussed recently?
Perhaps you’re not able to travel this time around. We’re also after your stories of where summer books took you. Some of the regulars of our Tips, links and suggestions blog already started sharing their fondest holiday reading memories – JournoKaty said:
I was one of those kids who had to be kicked out of the door to enjoy the sun and play with friends, as I would much rather be curled up with a good book. However, the Scottish weather usually ended up on my side and I had many a day indoors as the rain battered the windows. And back then it was Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton, Goosebumps, Beverly Cleary, so many different books.
I read Love in the Time of Cholera during a holiday in Antigua many years ago, especially during torrential downpours, and the experience has never left me. If you have the opportunity to start it during a summer rain storm, preferably with doors open (I'm assuming you'd be inside somewhere), I'd really recommend it!
Or SnowyJohn:
Tom Jones, I read on the beach in Spain on holiday, and it always reminds me of sun and sand. It helps that my copy is smeared with suncream. I memorised big chunks of John Donne's poetry on my tea breaks whilst working in a fish factory, and can still smell the smoked salmon when I think of him. I read Marlowe's complete plays in between serving pints in a pub one summer. The essays of Addison and Steele are inextricably linked to interrailing around Eastern Europe. etc.
There are two ways of sharing here: if you prefer to just write, you can of course use the comment thread below. For pictures or longer stories, share them by clicking on one of the blue "contribute" buttons or, if you’re out and about, you can use the GuardianWitness app on your smartphone – or search in the Guardian app for GuardianWitness assignments. We'll include the best submissions in a gallery on the Guardian site at the end of the summer.
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