August is a terrible month. For those who love summer, it’s the beginning of the end—like late-afternoon sunshine, the heat is a dirty trick distracting you from the lengthening shadows. For those who hate the season, August is one more interminable month of sweat and stickiness. (And for those in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s yet another chance for people in the north to wax poetic about the wrong season.)
But we are determined to make the best of it. Summer is only three months, after all, and it would be foolish to write off a third of it. So we’ll eat the stone fruit. We’ll read the books on the beach. We’ll wear the flip-flops, god help us. These Substackers show the way.
Art
Summer can be lovely, yes, but it is also a time of fires and floods and fog. On the days when summer isn’t really summering, here are some works of art that remind us what the season should feel like.
Clockwise from top left: art by Madeleine Gross, shared by Luz; painting by Wayne Thiebaud, shared by Lauren Sands; photo of David Hockney’s house, shared by Rose Florence; Greece on film, by Chris Mongeau; “7ft 0in,” by Hilary Pecis, shared by Katy Hessel
Movies
It’s a classic summer at the movies: you have your pick between dinosaurs, superheroes, and fast cars. And sure, you could be cynical about these films—the warmed-over storylines, the heedless adrenaline rushes, the shameless cash grabs. But allow us to mount a gentle defense. The summer blockbuster is good, actually. Like so many of summer’s joys, its pleasures harken back to simpler times, when we weren’t concerned with the economics of a theatrical release and had never heard of “IP.” So go ahead, slip into the air-conditioned theater. Get the novelty popcorn bucket. See the trailers for the seven other blockbusters. Watch the big, loud movie. Who knows—you might even be pleasantly surprised.
Music
Another point in summer’s plus column: There is no “song of the autumn.” Meanwhile, “every summer has a soundtrack by which it is preserved, and endures, in memory; the association of a song with its particular summer can outlast countless subsequent listenings at other seasons, in later years,” as
writes in The Complete Works of Summer.We don’t have any “Espresso”-level hits this year, but that gives us room for a more customized experience.
invite you to fill in the blank in Which ______ summer are you having? ’s Summer Fridays Radio features “the sounds of Sardinia, Ibiza, and the soundtrack to your summer.” And in ’s aforementioned post, he shares playlists by year. Here’s what he was listening to in 2000:Fashion
And because Substack is a place where we celebrate free speech, we’ll even let
try to sell you on it being The Summer of the Flip-Flop. “They’re fun. A little trashy. Slightly tongue-in-cheek. They toe the line (sorry) between style and satire. When you see someone in flip-flops, you don’t know if they’re deep into the Olsen cinematic universe, obsessed with Auralee because it’s this underground cool brand—or if it’s just hot out and these were by the door.”Food
Summer eating is a study in contrasts. You might be crafting fresh, beautiful salads with your bounty of homegrown heirloom tomatoes—or you might be chowing down on a fairground chili dog. There’s a little something for everyone.
Ruth Reichl has meals for hot weather, from sour cherry lemonade to a fresh corn salad. Sarah Stanback-Young offers an easy-breezy three-course lunch menu. Caroline Chambers recommends a salad filled with the best of summer produce. Samin Nosrat shares an “un-recipe” of grilled flatbread with ricotta and tomatoes for your next cookout. And for dessert, look to fruit. Flora Manson’s lovely summer cherry pie and The Grubworks Kitchen’s peach cobbler are great places to start.
Reads
In what Naomi Kanakia dubbed Substack Summer, writers including Ross Barkan, John Pistelli, Daniel Saldaña París, Lincoln Michel, Stuart Pennebaker and Emma Gannon, among others, have new books out. Collegeville Letters went on a quest for “vivid summer reading”—writing that transcends the summer “cliches of nostalgia, melting popsicles, unsustainable romance, Coppertone”—and collected some excellent specimens. Catherine Lacey has advocated for a Substack-wide reading of Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea. And over at Fresh Hell, Tina Brown suggests a sexy historical biography of—incredible vocab here—“famed political horizontale Pamela Harriman.”
Finally, we’ll leave you with Alex Dimitrov’s poem, an appropriately bittersweet ode to summer.
One more time. One more summer. The grass under you. The pink cherry stains. Someone takes you out. Someone shows you their gun. A firework goes off. The blue boys swim the lake. So much blood in the body. So much salt on the skin. Like it’s being prepared for something. Like a mouth fills with fizz. The sharp sugar of it. Your black jeans. The red cars. Where you learn to lie down. Where you pick the right guns. And the highways are warm. And our bodies— where will they fit in the Earth? Under the football fields maybe. What will they be after August? Strip malls paved over the heart. Hearts and kisses. Kisses and hearts. You better stay strong for it, angel. One of these mornings everything will be taken away.
I'm in the anti-summer category. I almost feel like I have reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder. And it seems endless, not in a good way. It's such a relief when September arrives, especially here in the beautiful Hudson Valley. Thanks for letting us summer-haters know that we're not alone!
Give me fall!