Summer is the season for lots of things like swimming, boating, baseball, ice cream, picnics, parades and outdoor fun.

It’s also a perfect time to read. Someone can read on a beach, in the shade or at home with the air conditioning.

The Marshall-Lyon County Library kicked off its 2026 summer reading season on Wednesday. Entertainment was provided by a string band called The Skally Line. They performed songs and told stories that focus on Minnesota.

In an age when many people fixate on electronics, it’s good to know that reading is alive and well. I hope kids still enjoy library activities as much as I did 55 years ago. I fondly remember Bonnie Doyle’s upstairs children’s department at Marshall’s former downtown library.

My first library experiences led to a lifelong interest in books and magazines. In first grade our class ordered children’s books from a book catalog.

The teachers expected that each child would order three or four books. I went well beyond that. With the first catalog I asked my parents if I could order all the books, about 25 altogether. Most parents would have told me to settle for less, but mine let me have them all.

I ordered fewer books with later catalogs, but gradually expanded toward a nice child’s library. As a pre-teen I shifted my interest to adult books; novels, story collections, history, biography and much more.

The annual library book sale was one of my favorite events of the year. I’d always come home with at least one full box, sometimes two of them.

Some of those books have stayed with me all my life. When I downsized last year with my move to Boulder Estates, I was determined to keep as many of my 500 books as possible. I found space for almost all of them in my one-bedroom apartment, and did it without crowding.

The most recent book I read was the 1980s novel Red Earth White Earth by Will Weaver, set on northern Minnesota’s White Earth Indian Reservation. Before that it was a 1940s book called Starling of the White House, a biography about a Secret Service agent who served five presidents.

I’m starting the summer with a history book called American Dialogue: The Founders and Us, which examines how each of the first four Presidents stood on a major issue and how the same issues still exist.

There are three books that I have as summer bucket list items. They include Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor and Poland by James Michener.

I’m not saying all this just to show how smart I am, or to prove that I love reading. I’m using myself as an example of how carefully chosen reading material can enrich someone’s life.

I look forward to next chapters every day. If I start to get bored I can always read. It’s almost a lifeline on lazy Sundays, or on holidays when I don’t have any plans with family or friends. It never disappoints me. It never feels like a waste of time.

I have mixed feelings about the reading of romance novels, serial westerns, or mysteries that simply fit within a standard formula.

On the one hand, they’re not particularly enlightening. They don’t resonate. They don’t have the power of Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, or Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

Having said that, the popular fiction still serves a purpose. It introduces people to a plot, filling it with fictional characters who have at least a certain amount of depth. It’s a positive way to escape the realities of daily life, something that can be a reward for finishing household chores or paying monthly bills.

We’re very fortunate in our local area to have excellent community libraries. They ensure that everyone from all walks of life has a chance to read at no cost.

We shouldn’t take it for granted. Hardcover and paperback books are getting more expensive. Online publishing is even worse because of how it often provides only temporary downloads, a chance to lease a book instead of owning it forever.

Libraries and bookstores should stand forever as the true gatekeepers of knowledge, the dependable judges of what’s worth reading.

Summer reading seasons prove that it’s still true. We can rely on it almost as much as we can rely on the warm lengthy summer days that are needed to grow food. Millions of people still want to read. I think they always will.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent