Summer books 2025: Get lost in our shelves of Chicago, spiritual or just plain weird books

Summer reading, if you ask me, should meander, without a plan. Pick up, put down, misplace, leave crusty with sand or warped with humidity. Fall is for rigor, winter for hunkering down, spring for peering ahead, but the right summer read is a promising dirt road in a field. Someday, when I open a bookstore and the big bucks roll in, I’ll shelve titles in very narrow categories, ensuring no one finds anything — except what they didn’t know they wanted. This summer survey will be my trial run.