Reading habits change across seasons and I've made peace with that. In summer I read faster and lighter — more plot, more momentum, more books. In winter I read slower and denser — more poetry, more difficult fiction, more non-fiction that requires sustained attention. This is not a rule I follow consciously. It's a pattern I noticed after tracking my reading for three years.

The books that seem wrong for the season feel wrong in a way I've learned to respect. I tried to read Middlemarch in August and couldn't sustain the attention. I read it in January over three weeks and it was exactly right. The book hadn't changed. The season had created the conditions the book required.

I've started using this knowledge to schedule reading — not rigidly, but directionally. Big ambitious books go on the winter pile. Easy pleasures go on the summer pile. The piles work together.