SOURCE: “Summer Reading,” in Commonweal, Vol. 125, No. 12, June 19, 1998, p. 20.

In the following excerpt, Finn argues that O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series is perfect for summer reading.

I've always wondered what's meant by “summer reading.” Must it consist of books too lightweight to admit to reading during the rest of the year? Do we really want to spend a season leafing through books of ponderous humor, memoirs about pets, accounts of the foibles of the royal family? Certainly one doesn't want to lug the complete Remembrance of Things Past to the beach, where it has to compete with the sun beating down, saltwater sticky hands, sand between the pages. But to read it volume by volume, on a grassy terrace in late afternoon or for an hour, with coffee, on a fragrant summer morning … well, why not?

For my kind of summer reading you have to have unaccustomed leisure (enough...