Brace. We are approaching “summer reading list” season, when valuable newspaper column inches are filled with recommendations for floppy paperbacks by zeitgeisty authors, novels easily consumed on a beach, biographies full of blandishment and non-fiction toggled for a Leaving Certificate reading age. All of these lists contain their moments of sparkle – I’m not that miserly – but in general, anything titled “The 90 best books to read this summer” is going to feature more duds than gems. There are not 90 good books published in most given years.

This is why last summer I swore myself off contemporary fiction – apart from when I am (with genuine gratitude and customary grace) assigned to read one for work. The canon is long and I want to be deeper in it than I currently am. And I am afraid that spending my evenings or my vacations with Coco Mellors is simply not going to get me there. I also have to ask: since when did “can be read on a beach” become a valuable literary attribute? “This novel is compatible with sand”?

No. The state of our literary ambition – whether it comes from within, or from the fourth estate – should be much higher than that. Summer is no excuse for lax intellectual standards, and a heatwave never a reason for leaden prose. Literacy rates are plummeting........

© The Irish Times