When the weather begins to warm each spring, my mind turns toward a summer reading list for those long afternoons escaping the hot weather inside.

I scour a variety of sources for books to add to mine, one of the most surprising ever was the painter Vincent van Gogh! When I read the number of books (and the variety of them) that he wrote about to his brother Theo, I thought, Wow! This guy was such an avid reader, I certainly couldn’t go wrong adding some of his titles to my own summer reading list. Then, I thought, why not share this tack with my readers on The Diary of an Improvateaur.

His comments about the book had great depth, and I found myself appreciating his story even more after I brought his thoughts into a cohesive post. What fascinated me the most is that he didn’t read as a writer would; he continuously saw literature as an artist would: “There is something of Rembrandt in Shakespeare, and of Correggio in Michelet, and of Delacroix in Victor Hugo, and then there is something of Rembrandt in the Gospel, or in the Gospel something of Rembrandt, as you like it. And in Bunyan there is something of Millet, and in Harriet Beecher Stowe there is something of Ary Scheffer.” If you want to see what books he read that I recommend as terrific beach reading, click through to the post.