The Big Read: Recommended: reading

It's important to be not afraid. Or if you are afraid, then it's important to live as though you aren't. Summer is here, and at the beginning of each summer I apply myself with some pleasure to the tricky question of what to read over the end of the year, when, I always imagine, there will be time in the long evenings and midday heat to wade chest-deep into some broad-waisted book I've spent my life hitherto not reading.