Do you love reading, writing or books in general? Here are five ways to get bookish this summer

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

Go …

Festivals are a mainstay of summer travel and entertainment. Book lovers spending time in Ontario’s Haliburton/Kawarthas cottage country — or Toronto readers who would simply enjoy a day trip — might want to head to Lakefield, just outside Peterborough, for the Lakefield Literary Festival (where Margaret Laurence once famously lived). It runs July 14 and 15 in venues around the picturesque village, and authors attending include Catherine Hernandez, Harley Rustad, Sheila Heti, Iain Reid and Waubgeshig Rice, among others. See lakefieldliteraryfestival.com for information.

There are festivals across the country, too, including:

Discover …

I once met a couple at a Scottish B&B who planned their summer holidays around locations that had been mentioned in the long-running U.K. soap opera “Coronation Street” the previous season. If a bookish person were inclined to take their lead, they would find a fine guide at Project Bookmark Canada, which lists 29 locations across the country where significant books were set — plaques mark their importance and give a sense of the nation’s literary history. It dubs itself “Canada’s Literary Trail.” You could do southwestern Ontario, for example, and see points in Hamilton, Oakville and Welland. A walking tour of Toronto is also rich with options, including books by Dionne Brand, Michael Ondaatje and many others. Go to projectbookmarkcanada.ca for more information.

Browse …

There are some wonderful indie bookstores scattered across the country and the province. So many of these stores have become community hubs, offering not just a place to buy a book, but to gather, meet authors, attend a reading or even sign up for a writers’ workshop.

One way to figure out if there’s an indie bookstore near you is to check out the map marking indie shops 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: simply log onto the site and click on one of the place markers in the area you’re in. You’ll get a photo of the shop and directions.

If you’re on a road trip south of the border, you could head to Ann Patchett’s bookstore Parnassus Books in Nashville (parnassusbooks.net), to 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 …

Among the books I’m excited to recommend this summer is “The Imposters” by Tom Rachman, a glorious novel that has at its centre an aging writer named Dora Fernhofer whose writing career isn’t what it used to be. She’s trying to write one last book to revive it. It’s cleverly structured and 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.

You can find more recommendations in our Ultimate Summer Reading Guide.

Write …

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

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

Staying in the city, the Toronto Public Library has workshops at various branches: for example, the Sanderson branch has two poetry writing workshops, one each in July and 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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