5 ways for literature lovers to get bookish this summer

There are so many ways to pursue a bookish life in the summer: cozying up in a hammock with a good book is one way, but so is getting out and doing book-related things. Here are our suggestions:

To go …

Festivals are a mainstay of summer travel and entertainment. Book lovers spending time in Ontario’s Haliburton/Kawarthas cottage country – or readers in Toronto who just enjoy a day out – may want to head to Lakefield, just outside Peterborough, for the Lakefield Literary Festival (where Margaret Laurence once famously attended). It will run July 14 and 15 at locations in the picturesque village, and authors in attendance include Catherine Hernandez, Harley Rustad, Sheila Heti, Iain Reid, and Waubgeshig Rice. To see lakefieldliteraryfestival.com for information.

There are also festivals around the country, including:

To discover …

I once met a couple in a Scottish B&B who were planning their summer holiday around locations that had been featured in the long-running British soap opera “Coronation Street” the previous season. If a bookworm were inclined to take the lead, they’d find a great guide at Project Bookmark Canada, which lists 29 locations across the country where important books have been placed – plaques mark their importance and give a sense of the literary history of the country. It calls itself “Canada’s Literary Trail.” For example, you could do southwestern Ontario and see points in Hamilton, Oakville, and Welland. A walking tour of Toronto is also rich in options, including books by Dionne Brand, Michael Ondaatje, and many others. Go to projectbookmarkcanada.ca For more information.

Browse…

There are some wonderful independent bookstores scattered across the country and province. So many of these stores have become community hubs, providing a place not only to buy a book, but also to gather, meet authors, attend a lecture, or even enroll in a writer’s workshop.

One way to find out if there’s an indie bookstore near you is to check the card highlighting indie stores across the country at cibabooks.ca/bookseller-map, courtesy of the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association. Think Type Books on Spadina Road, Children’s French Book Corner on the Danforth or Manifest Bookstore on Eglinton Avenue West. Further afield there’s Perfect Books in Ottawa, or even King’s Co-op Bookstore in Halifax or Upstart & Crow (among many others) in Vancouver. The map is interactive: just log in to the site and click on one of the placemarks in the area where you are. You will be given a photo of the store and directions.

If you’re taking a road trip south of the border, you can head to Ann Patchett’s Parnassus Books bookstore in Nashville (parnassusbooks.net), after Judy Blume’s Books & Books in Key West, Fla., (booksandbookskw.com) or Jeff Kinney’s An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Me. (anunlikelystory.com). There’s always time to fit in a detour to pick up a good book.

Read …

One of the books I’d like to recommend this summer is Tom Rachman’s “The Imposters,” a glorious novel centered around the aging writer Dora Fernhofer, whose writing career isn’t what it used to be. She tries to write one last book to revive it. Smartly structured, it explores the importance of art, pokes fun at the publishing world, and has a lot to say about the power of human relationships. The writing is by turns funny, poignant, page-turning, and ultimately celebrates our shared humanity.

Find more recommendations in our Ultimate Summer Reading Guide.

To write …

Do you think writers’ retreats are only for professional writers? Think again. If you’ve been thinking about writing your own story, or just want to spend some time in a reader’s environment, there are plenty of places to get out of town for a week or weekend for a “self-directed” retreat or with authors or chaperones to guide your work.

Sage Hill Writing in Saskatchewan offers in-person and online courses for experienced or emerging writers (sagehillwriting.ca). Some deadlines have passed, but some courses are still available. (In the fall, Alison Pick offers a retreat in Beaver Valley from Sept. 29 to Oct. 4. alisonpick.com/retreats)

If you stay in town, the Toronto Public Library has workshops in several branches: for example, the Sanderson branch has two poetry writing workshops, one in July and one in August. The S. Walter Stewart branch has a workshop for teens on writing about animals. The Bloor/Gladstone branch has a series of Coffee Shop sessions that, much like a writer’s retreat, offer dedicated time to write, share wisdom and experience, and work with like-minded people.

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