10 Favorite Places to Read Outdoors

The Read House, which is next door to Mentor Library's Main Branch, is a cozy place for an outdoor read.

I love autumn. Summer can get too hot; winter, too cold; and everything makes me sneeze in the spring.

But autumn’s just about perfect. And one of my favorite things to do in the fall is read outside.

I grab a good book, which is easy to do because I work in a library. Then I find somewhere cozy to read, preferably with some fall foliage.

I’m in my glory with a good book and a cozy nook to read in. Fortunately, we’re blessed with a plethora of beautiful locations around Lake County.

In no particular order, my ten favorite places to read outside in Lake County are:

1. Wildwood Cultural Center & Park. I love to sit on one of the benches right outside of the Tudor home and enjoy the architecture and arboreal atmosphere.
2. Squire’s Castle. The perfect place for a medieval tale.
3. Mentor Beach Park. Headlands Beach State Park is beautiful too—anywhere along the lake, really—but Mentor Beach Park in Mentor-on-the-Lake is a personal favorite because it’s quiet and cozy.
4. Holden Arboretum. There are a lot of picturesque places around the arboretum. My favorite—the lantern court gardens.
5. Veterans Park. There is more than one Veterans Park in Lake County. I’m talking about the one in Mentor, though I have a soft spot for the Painesville park too. I like to sit at the edge of the dock and dangle my feet over Granger Pond as I read.
6. Mentor Marsh/Mentor Lagoons. Two different, but adjacent nature preserves. Both are tranquil, lovely and perfect for Saturday afternoon reading.
7. Wes Point Park. In the middle of busy downtown Willoughby, you have this pretty slice of verdure. Visit when they have the farmers markets and grab something to eat between chapters.
8. Eleanor Garfield Park. I like to sit on the bridge that crosses the pond and listen to the ducks while I read.
9. James A. Garfield National Historic Site. The president was an avid reader with more than 3,000 books in his library, so it makes sense that his Lake County home is such a cozy place to read. There are cozy, secluded picnic tables sprinkled around the park, but I like the bench behind the visitor’s center.
10. Mentor Public Library’s Read House. During my lunch breaks, I enjoy going next door, sitting on Roberts Round Stage and appreciating a quiet corner of the city that’s right off Mentor Avenue.

By the way, Mentor Public Library has Little Free Libraries at parks all around town in case you forget to bring a book with you.

And if you need a reading recommendation? Well, we’re good for that too.

Where’s your favorite place to read outdoors in Lake County?

Flash libraries popping up in your neighborhood

Kristin, one of our reference librarians, at a flash library in Veterans Park.

In a perfect world, nobody would live more than a block from the library. Every person—child, teen or adult—could come to the library on a whim.

However, we live in a world of finite resources, and it would be impossible for us to build a branch on every block. So we try to do the next best thing and bring the library to you.

We do it in a lot of ways: our digital services that let you download eBooks, stream video and music, or download mp3s from home; our little free libraries; Beach Reads.

And our Flash Libraries are going to be springing up at parks, cul-de-sacs and farmers' markets this summer.

If you're not familiar with a Flash Library, they're similar to Bookmobiles. We come to your neck of the woods with popular movies and books. If you have a library card you can check them out—same as if you were in a brick-and-mortar library. And if you don't have a library card, well you can get one of those too. (And you really should have a library card.)

We have already brought our Flash Library to Lake Metroparks Veterans Park and you'll likely see us there again soon.

We're also bringing our Flash Library to the city of Mentor's Final Fridays, Headlands BeachFest on July 26 and Concord Community Days on Aug. 16.

Where else do you want to see our Flash Library? How can we help bring Mentor Library to you?

What's Better Than Shakespeare? Free Shakespeare

We at the Mentor Public Library love William Shakespeare's work in pretty much any of its iterations.

So we're always excited when the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival season arrives.

If you haven't heard of the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, it's a unique experience. Actors from the area perform a pair of the bard's plays in beautiful outdoor locations throughout the region. For free.

And the only thing better than Shakespeare is free Shakespeare.

The festival comes to Lake County this weekend with a performance of Measure for Measure on Saturday, July 6, at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site and The Two Gentlemen of Verona on Sunday, July 7, at Penitentiary Glen.

Both shows begin at 7 p.m.; and they are outside, so it's recommended that you bring a blanket or lawn chairs.

Also -- not to belabor the point -- both are absolutely free.

Shakespeare billed Measure for Measure as one of his comedies, but that classification might be oversimplifying it. It has a darker tone than, say, Taming of the Shrew or Gentlemen of Verona.

The play deals in some lofty issues of: pride, humility, mercy, justice and truth.

Its famous line and overlying theme is, "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall."

If you want a primer, Wikipedia's not a bad place to start.

Meanwhile, The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a more straightforward comedy. It's also one of Shakespeare's earliest plays. Some think it was his first.

It features a lot of the tropes and themes that will later become commonplace in Shakespeare's work: issues of loyalty and fidelity, comedic sidekicks and heroines dressing as men. (Cross-dressing has long been a staple of British humour.)

So see one of the shows. Watch them both. Bring a picnic dinner with you.

Enjoy Shakespeare in some of the most beautiful settings Lake County has to offer.

And, if you like Shakespeare, we have pretty much everything he ever wrote if you want to borrow it.