Read a Very Long Book (VLB)

This has so many benefits! You get a companion for a few months that might turn out to be a life-long friend; you can track the passage of time with satisfying bits of incremental progress; you can brag about it later; you'll always remember it as "the summer I read [insert VLB here]". Middlemarch, Lonesome Dove, The Magic Mountain, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Dune, The Guns of August, whatever! Long live the VLB.