Summer workbooks evoke that period when holidays also meant light homework: pages of sums, spelling exercises, and reading comprehension to not lose pace before returning to school. As adults, however, homework has changed. Now the only obligation seems to be another: not practicing spelling or mathematics, but disconnecting. Leaving screens behind and slowing down after intense months. But disconnecting doesn't always mean doing nothing. It can also mean filling a sudoku, solving a riddle, or letting oneself be carried away by a workbook that tests creativity.
The great classic continues to be the Blackie Books summer workbook, which this year reaches its fifteenth edition with an invitation to "de-rust the mind and reforest the brain." But the options go much further. The already essential Destroy This Journal continues to make the reader the protagonist; The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron, proposes a journey to awaken creativity, and the Murdoku, a recent phenomenon, combine numerical puzzles with the intrigue typical of an Agatha Christie novel.