Allison Duncan from Vulture explores what is a beach read and why?

I remember vividly receiving my first piece of real luggage at age 8: a massive duffel bag on wheels that was supposed to evoke Lindsay Lohan’s cool-girl character Hallie Parker in The Parent Trap, who carried a trendy, neon-yellow bag to camp and was admittedly a personal idol at the time.

Alas, instead of packing a deck of playing cards and contraband junk food, I left for summer vacations with a bag full of books — hardcovers. I was that kid. As I was too young to plan ahead for reading anything that wasn’t purely pleasurable, I fell into a habit I maintain today of packing only the fun ones: the beach reads.

The concept of the “beach read” seems ubiquitous and universal, but as a marketing category, it’s actually quite recent. The designation found its way into popular culture and the general lexicon less than 30 years ago, according to a piece by Michelle Dean in The Guardian in 2016. Dean traced its first use to the summer of 1990, “which leads me to believe that somewhere out there is a canny book publicist sitting on the fact that he or she coined the term.” (This year, one canny publicist sent me a few beach reads in a woven tote to really drive the idea home. I loved it.)

The notion of dedicated vacation reading is at least a little older than that. The New York Times published a “Vacation Reading List” in June 1976, with categories ranging from autobiographies and current affairs to poetry and fiction. Something for everyone, then. That kind of variety made sense when everyone was reading — before you could binge-watch an epic fantasy series from your outdoor chaise instead.

Read full post on Vulture.