It’s summer but today is overcast. And that means it’s a Deighton Day.
The expression was my dad’s. He was a big fan of the master British spy novelist Len Deighton, who is still most famous for creating the Harry Palmer character featured in the smash-hit adaptations (A Funeral in Berlin, The Ipcress File and Billion Dollar Brain) which made Michael Caine’s name in the sixties (along with Zulu).
Anyway, when dad was a young man he spent a summer helping a family friend install blinds in their area. At lunchtime they’d sit in the van and have a sandwich and one particular summer Dad was reading Funeral in Berlin, the first of the Harry Palmer books (although the main character doesn’t have a name in the books, only the films).
It was overcast but didn’t rain. They returned to the same job the next day: same weather, same book. Same again on day three. Forever more, dad would term grey weather on summer days “Deighton Days”, such was the strength of the psychological link. And on such days, for the rest of his life, he would say “Ah, a Deighton Day today” and slide one of those musty spy tales from the shelf.
I think all readers must have these literary preferences. After all, I would never contemplate reading Oliver Twist on a hot beach in Florida, nor would I bother reading Raymond Chandler while stuck in a snowbound hotel. It would seem wrong, dissonant, and unnecessary, considering how many other options I have on my bookshelf.
Part of books’ charm is that they are escapist, and if you are reading about the cosily ominous marshlands of Kent in Great Expectations, well, you don’t want your surroundings to be working against you. I’d rather be tucked up in bed with the wind lashing at the windows as I read about Pip and Magwitch than squinting against the sun in a Savannah park (wear sunglasses then – ed).
Unrelated to the weather, I also find it hard to follow complicated plots when I am on vacation: all that constant rubbing sun cream in to little backs and checking that no one has drowned tend to make me lose focus. This is why non-fiction is good for holidays, preferably some big slice of gossipy schadenfraude like Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup or Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History. Books that make me feel better about being a nobody and also feel good about never having lost billions of dollars through stupidity or fraud.
So yes, non-fiction that you can put down and pick up again without missing a beat is good for going away. The benefit of non-fiction is that the author is constantly TELLING YOU, so it comes with a foolproof “plot”, if you like. It’s harder to lose the thread.
Does weather and other external circumstances influence your choice of books? Spill all in the comments.
Thanks for reading,
J x
Jessica Harper Uncanceled 
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