Vacation by the Book: The Joys and Benefits of Popcorn Reading

There is value in reading books that are simply fun

'Tis the season for beach reads. (Kinga/Shutterstock)

People pack all sorts of things when they head off on summer vacation. Most of these are standard for traveling: clothing suited to the destination and the weather, toiletries, food and drink, the wagonload of paraphernalia required for toddlers, and other necessities. Next come the specialty items. Some vacationers carefully select special treats—chocolates, wine, cheeses. Others bring along gifts if they’re staying with a host or celebrating some occasion. Some carry talismans and charms for good luck, such as a coin, bracelet, or horse chestnut.

And bibliophiles bring books.

Some of us take great care in choosing these companions of print-and-paper. We may throw shorts, T-shirts, and swimwear helter-skelter into a suitcase for our stay at the beach or in the mountains, but we’ll brood over which books to bring like a miser counting his coins. If bound for the shore, for example, experienced book folks will favor paperbacks, preferably bought secondhand, that can weather the sun and sand, absorb the drops of perspiration and tanning oil that will inevitably dot the pages oceanside, and will hold up well after being jammed into a carry-all bag containing juice boxes, buckets, and sand shovels for the kids.

Heavy Lit

Of course, subject matter and genre are the main factors in this selection process. A few readers may select classics for their holiday, lugging along “Anna Karenina” or some hefty novel by Charles Dickens. Others may slip in commentaries on history, culture, and politics, like Douglas Murray’s recent “The War on the West” or David McCullough’s biography of Theodore Roosevelt’s early years, “Mornings on Horseback.”

All well and good. I myself plan on reading “The War on the West” this summer, and have sometimes packed up tomes like Mark Helprin’s “A Soldier of the Great War” when setting off on a journey.

But like some readers, no matter where I’m headed, or even if I’m celebrating summer on the back deck of the house where I live, I usually have a “popcorn book” at hand.

Lite Lit

A few years ago, I read, enjoyed, and reviewed John Gilstrap’s “Lethal Game,” one of a series of suspense thrillers he’s written about Jonathan Grave, a fictional hostage rescuer. On the back cover of the book are several blurbs of praise, one of which reads “A sizzling beach read for military action fans.” To this day, I have no recollection of the plot of this book, but do recollect the transient enjoyment I took from reading it.

“Beach read” is another name for popcorn book.

These are the books we devour just as we go through a bowl of popcorn. Like that snack of exploded kernels laced with butter and salt, popcorn books satisfy the pleasure of the moment. We read them with that same absentminded zest with which we consume the corn.

Here are just three examples from my time spent with popcorn books. Years ago, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series entertained me for many of my reading hours. I read a dozen or more of his stories about this amateur detective, and enjoyed every moment, yet all I remember now is that McGee lived on a boat dockside somewhere in Florida. Lee Child’s thrillers featuring vagabond and tough guy Jack Reacher, and James Lee Burke’s exquisitely written tales about detective Dave Robicheaux, a man haunted by his past, both entranced me, but today I couldn’t tell you the plot of any of these books. One runs into another until they’re as muddled together as the ingredients in a 15-bean soup.

Do these stories qualify as great literature? Absolutely not. But like our long-ago ancestors who sat by their fires and listened to the tellers of tales, their writers entertain us. Reading them, like eating popcorn, is sheer pleasure while it lasts. No, pleasure is the wrong word. Reading these books, and so many like them, is, quite simply, a blast.

No Apologies Necessary

Some friends and family members seem embarrassed to have their own favorite popcorn authors and books. One of my sisters, who has taught English literature and once worked as an editor, told me recently in an apologetic tone that she sometimes reads Nicholas Sparks. She seemed relieved when I told her I had enjoyed several of his novels, popcorn books all, in part because many of them are set at North Carolina’s Outer Banks, which I’ve visited off and on since I was 7, and in part because they provided a few hours of escape from my own life.

This last reason explains why most of us enjoy popcorn reading. Like summer vacations, which above all else interrupt the harried lives most of us lead, authors like Sparks and Burke remove us temporarily from our worries and trials. They’re entertainers, better in my opinion than any movie or television show. The books they write are vacations in and of them themselves.

Childhood Regained

When we lifelong readers think back to our youth, back to when we were pre-teens and teens, we remember that much of our reading, at least out of school, gave us this same sensation. Nancy Drew. The Hardy Boys. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia tales, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden.” “The Railway Children” by Edith Nesbit and “Swallows and Amazons” by Arthur Ransome. Comic books and magazines like “Mad” or “Boys’ Life.” All the other stories we so fleetingly loved, long forgotten with the passage of years.

With these books in hand, the world around us often magically vanished. Frank and Joe Hardy had the power to make that 11-year-old kid forget, at least for a little while, the bully who tormented him in school. Anne of Green Gables and her many adventures surely lent some smiles to girls familiar with tears. Even today, classics and popcorn books alike whisk the young to the magical lands of literature while at the same helping build in them the fortitude and armor needed to face the world.

We didn’t read these books for a school assignment, and we certainly didn’t read them to impress others with our erudition. We read them because they were fun. We read them because they told stories that utterly absorbed us. We read them because we had fallen in love with them.

A Thank You to Our Storytellers

C.S. Lewis once offered this advice on reading: “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.”

This guideline applies to popcorn books as well. We can’t thrive on a diet consisting solely of popped corn—we need the nutrients of meat and vegetable literature, the “serious stuff”—but we also require, it seems to me, books that sweep away our troubles and perhaps even offer up a little strength and hope when we need them. Romance and historical novels, shoot-em-ups, fantasy, and science fiction: We should wear no badge of shame for enjoying such genres. The escapism they offer is R&R for the heart and soul.

So here’s toast of appreciation and praise to all those writers who wave their magic wand of words and take us into other worlds.