Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > O'Brian, Patrick - Molly Finn (essay date 19 June 1998)

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Molly Finn (essay date 19 June 1998)

SOURCE: “Summer Reading,” in Commonweal, Vol. 125, No. 12, June 19, 1998, p. 20.

[In the following excerpt, Finn argues that O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series is perfect for summer reading.]

I've always wondered what's meant by “summer reading.” Must it consist of books too lightweight to admit to reading during the rest of the year? Do we really want to spend a season leafing through books of ponderous humor, memoirs about pets, accounts of the foibles of the royal family? Certainly one doesn't want to lug the complete Remembrance of Things Past to the beach, where it has to compete with the sun beating down, saltwater sticky hands, sand between the pages. But to read it volume by volume, on a grassy terrace in late afternoon or for an hour, with coffee, on a fragrant summer morning … well, why not?

For my kind of summer reading you have to have unaccustomed leisure (enough time...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John Bayley (essay date 7 November 1991)
   2. Frank Stewart (review date 4 April 1993)
   3. Byron Rogers (review date 10 July 1993)
   4. Michael Dirda (review date August 1993)
   5. Patrick T. Reardon (review date 19 December 1993)
   6. Frederick Pratter (review date 31 December 1993)
   7. John Balzar (review date 2 January 1994)
   8. Thomas McGonigle (review date 2 January 1994)
   9. Elliott Abrams (review date 24 January 1994)
   10. James Hamilton-Paterson (review date 26 December 1994)
   11. Frederick Pratter (review date 2 May 1995)
   12. Katherine A. Powers (review date July 1995)
   13. Sam Pickering (review date Spring 1996)
   14. Thomas R. Edwards (essay date Summer 1996)
   15. John Balzar (review date 20 October 1996)
   16. Edward T. Wheeler (review date 8 November 1996)
   17. Christopher Clausen (review date 16 December 1996)
   18. James Teacher (review date 4 January 1997)
   19. John Mullan (review date 10 January 1997)
   20. Books Magazine (review date October 1997)
   21. Molly Finn (essay date 19 June 1998)
   22. Alan Judd (review date 22 August 1998)
   23. Barbara Everett (review date 4 September 1998)
   24. Martin Jacques (review date 6 September 1998)
   25. Christopher Hitchens (essay date 9 March 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright