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Summer seems like it would be a good time to embark on a thousand-page classic novel. The season implies more free time and lush park lawns where you can lounge outside and read for hours on end. But, in all reality, you probably don't have more free time than you did in the winter (it's not like we live in France where people have, you know, vacations). You likely have the same job you did in the wintertime. You might even have the stress of more social commitments—what with barbecues and concerts and the general merriment that comes with warmth. Even when you do take the time to luxuriate in the sun, book in hand, you don’t really want to be hanging out with Leopold Bloom.
Last summer I finally started Leo Tolstoy’s nearly-1,000 page epic Anna Karenina. It was going pretty well. I was intrigued by Anna's moral quandaries. But then I got to Tolstoy's lengthy, philosophical, digressions about the Russian peasantry. Perhaps this reflects poorly on me, but let me admit it anyway: descriptions of field-hoeing and the fertile Russian countryside did not agree with sweaty subway platforms. I put it down, retreating into something new, but familiar: Nora Ephron's Crazy Salad, which I immediately fell in love with. Sorry about that, Leo.