Addicted to summer beach reads

Now that it’s July and I officially have my first beach trip of the year completed, I can finally start believing that it’s summer. And there’s one more thing that proved to me the hot muggy weather is here to stay: Horribly written books are following me.

These horribly written books, commonly know as beach reads, are everywhere — on the coffee table of my apartment, spilling off the bookshelf I share with my roommates and even on bus advertisements, Carrie Bradshaw-style. I can’t avoid them.

A week or two ago, one of my friends brought home what could only be described as an awful teen romance book — i.e., a summer beach read. I didn’t think much of it as the book made its way from one friend to another and a waiting list started for who could read the book next. But when I came home from work one day, it was innocently sitting on my coffee table, just waiting for the next reader.

I knew it wasn’t my turn, but I had homework to put off and I wanted to see what all the buzz was about. So I picked it up and started reading.

Two hundred pages later, I had to pull myself away to do my homework — or else I would have been awake until 4 a.m. The next day, I rushed home, excited to read what was next.

But I couldn’t find the book. I searched all through the apartment and asked my friends, but no one had seen it. And when it turned up a day later, I quickly abandoned a nap I was starting and finished the book in one sitting.

So why was I so obsessed with this book? The writing was horrible, the dialogue cheesy and the plot completely unbelievable. Yet this book had the power to captivate both my friends and me.

It wasn’t a lack of reading material — we had plenty more books, classics included, sitting on our shelves. And while I could blame the summer heat for getting to my head and impairing my judgment (though I think it did play a part), I think it’s more than that.

In a book like this one, it’s easy to put the literary mishaps aside and become wrapped up in the story. Readers can pretend the crazy, cliche and romantic plots can happen in real life. Plus, the purely fun reading has no academic value, which is a nice break from textbooks and other reading during the school year.

And it’s no secret the sellers of beach reads seem to have all this figured out. They know that putting “beach read” in front of readers’ faces will automatically stir up images of lazy days lounging in the sand with the perfect love story at their fingertips.

But in the end, it’s the daydreaming and escape from reality that makes beach reads so addicting. And if we can’t read them in the summer, then when can we?