Think about where you read. The living room sofa is an all-too-common spot, but to an outdoors person, the sofa is a good place only on a rainy day.

Consider the possibilities for making reading an outdoors activity. A key consideration is finding the ideal spot to hunker down and spend a couple of hours or so.  

For example, I once made it though several chapters of a book while sitting in my car at Goleta Beach County Park during a driving rainstorm.

The drumming sound of the rain on the car, the howl of the wind, and the crash of the nearby surf combined to drown out everything, allowing me to totally concentrate on that book. It was a great reading experience.  

I enjoy scouting around for outdoor places that seem just right for reading. A part of what makes a spot appropriate depends upon a reader’s own needs.

I wouldn’t do well trying to get some reading done at the tables outside of Starbucks, yet I can’t argue with the number of people I see sitting there reading.

Here is one of my top choices: I like to sit near the water under a bridge over a creek bed and read. I’m about a block or two from home, but it feels like a different world.
 
Public parks get their share of readers and that makes perfect sense considering it is a large area in a somewhat natural setting, usually with trees and grass.

Park benches are not very comfortable for prolonged relaxing, so I recommend bringing a lawn chair.  

If lugging a lawn chair is not to your liking, you are welcome to engage in the age old hunt for just the right sitting spot up next to a tree, and at just the right angle to be comfortable sitting and leaning against the tree.

I’ve made friends with many trees and boulders and sand dunes in this way.
 
One of my own favorite spots for reading is near the end of one of our public piers. Goleta pier is a very good reading pier.

I’ve taken a little six-pack size cooler with some drinks and snacks, and spent some good reading time out on the pier.

Of course I had a line in the water while reading, because in the immortal words of my cartoon hero: “Aye am what aye am and that’s all that aye am.” That would of course be Popeye the Sailor Man.
 
Here are some more thoughts and I’m sure you can add more to the list yourself: Patio, porch, poolside (or on a float in the pool) creek side, turnout on a mountain road, mountaintop, treehouse, boat, harbor breakwater, library (outside), church grounds, stadium, Courthouse Sunken Gardens.

My own top choice is sitting on the shore in a cove on Santa Cruz Island.