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_Whether it's the indulgent hours or lighter genres, summer reading is characterized by its reverie. In My Summer Books, NPR hosts and reporters share their memories of summer reading

and books. Today, Nina Totenberg, NPR's legal affairs correspondent._ DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE MEMORY OF SUMMER READING? My first love affair with books was in the summer in Aspen, Colo.,

where my father played violin and taught in the summer. In those days, Aspen was a very small place, with no TV or radio signal that got across the mountains, but it had a wonderful, small

public library. It was there that I discovered Nancy Drew, who became my model for female success in life. I devoured her adventures, trotting into the one-room library almost daily to trade

in one book for the next. I soon discovered other female heroines -- Nurse Cherry Ames, stewardess Vicki Barr, and other mystery solvers. But Nancy was the perfect one, with the perfect

boyfriend, the perfect jack-knife dive, the perfect instinct for something gone awry, and of course, she was fearless. I was anything but fearless, but Nancy's successes gave me hope

that in a world where men had all the fun jobs, I too would one day get one of those jobs. WHAT TYPES OF BOOKS DO YOU ENJOY, PARTICULARLY THIS TIME OF YEAR? I wish I could tell you about my

highly intellectual reading, but I am not a novel reader for the most part. I read a little mystery trash and a lot of nonfiction -- biographies and page-turning history, mostly. One of my

favorite and least-known nonfiction finds was _20th Century Journey: A Memoir of a Life and the Times: The Start: 1904-1930_ by William Shirer. He was one of Murrow's boys who is most

famous for his books about the Third Reich. But this little gem is a wonderful account of life in America in the early part of the 20th century and the molding of a young journalist. One

biography I recommend often is about Chief Justice John Marshall, _John Marshall: Definer of a Nation_ by Jean Edward Smith. It explains Marshall and also American life in the early years of

the Republic. Marshall was one of George Washington's lieutenants in the Revolutionary War. He was also a key player in the ratification debates over the Constitution, a diplomat, and,

of course, a lawyer. Without doubt, he was the most important chief justice in the nation's history. He was also a women's rights advocate, a cook for his invalid wife... well,

you get my drift. Among the other books that suit my summer taste for page-turning history include _No Ordinary Time_, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, _Seabiscuit_ by Laura Hillenbrand and, a book

I recently read about the relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill, _Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship_ by Jon Meacham. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more,

visit https://www.npr.org.