Have you started your summer reading list yet?

You might want to compile something in keeping with the actual weather– “A Christmas Carol” or “Miracle on 34th Street,” for instance.

But no. Those heartwarming stories are so 19th and 20th century. This is the gritty present. Afflicted moderns require confirmation of our miserable state in the mirror of literature. Or so the publishing trend goes.

What might you fill your mind with during what I am calling this chronological summer?

Current bestseller lists and the proverbial, if unaware, publisher recommendations for “sizzling summer reads” span the gamut of dysfunction, dystopia, trauma-filled memoirs, trauma-filled histories with some new twist, and a biographical parade of one-hit wonders.

Sure, maybe that one hit is broad, deep, expansive, lucrative. In a bookstore recently, I spied a new autobiography by Richard Branson and said to myself, “Who’s he?” A little research informed me he’s the emperor of the Virgin enterprise. He’s written books outlining his methods for achieving success in business. His single-minded devotion to the Virgin line of businesses has made him wealthy, and therefore, biography worthy.

A new Bruce Lee biography inhabits the recommended reading list.

As does a memoir by David Lynch. And a memoir by an unfamiliar person about becoming a widower. That last might actually be helpful to people, and thus, quite possibly, the most worthwhile of the batch. Otherwise, the crop of memoirs and biographies seems as meaningful as television at a gas pump.

There are other options: autism in Nazi Vienna, drug cartels and bear poachers, and a cautionary account of fascism — past, present, and future — by Madeleine Albright. Sorry, Madame Secretary, but you lost me when you assigned “a special place in hell” to women who did not support Hillary Clinton.

Is there relief to be found in fiction? Some light, breezy summer frolic?

Well, let’s see — stalkers, gritty murder mysteries, deadly political intrigue, suspense, kidnappings, disappearances.

We create sayings like “Truth is stranger than fiction” because the obverse is so often true — in this case, fiction is more normal than so much that happens. Fiction has always been a realistic mirror of made-up characters and plots that touch us because they speak to the deepest realities of the human condition. Even when Charles Dickens gave his characters defining, unrealistic names, the full panoply of human behavior was on display in his novels. Taken as a whole, his work is as much about redemption as it is the cruelty of industrialized civilization.

What would the brooding Brontes do with the apocalyptic circumstances that crush the characters of today’s stories? Authors have traditionally created characters that struggle with the psychology of living; these are characters anyone can understand. Now, though, characters are in a fight to the death against a humanity-killing virus, or oppressive totalitarian governments, or warmongering masterminds with a sophisticated nuclear arsenal.

Has life really become that oppressive? If the traumas and post-apocalyptic heroes’ journeys that dominate today’s literature mirror this post-industrial age of information and technology, then maybe it’s time to acknowledge that there’s trouble in digital paradise. Maybe all our gadgets and connectivity and instant consumer bliss are robbing humanity of some essential quality that fills the best literature. Maybe that something is a sense of spirit — some would call it soul — the intangible part of ourselves that navigates a menu of emotions and interactions, learning and changing as the plots of our lives play out. In the story of trauma, set in the wasteland of apocalyptic earth, there is only survival.

I find it hard to separate the pleasure of reading from the content of what I’m reading. While human existence is neither all sugar nor all bile, stories should resemble a spirited human reality, a more accessible reality than the materialistic and mechanistic existence of so much of the modern stuff of literary lists.

Is it any wonder summer readers like to lounge in a hammock on a summer afternoon with a cozy mystery, a romance, or a novel of absurd and frolicsome blundering?

This summer, I plan to occupy a cozy corner of my special place in hell, sitting beside a stack of cozy tales recommended by nobody.

Renee Gravelle is a Dunkirk resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com.­