Conventional wisdom dictates that summer reading should be easy. You’re on vacation, by the pool, hiding in a corner from the in-laws.  Who the hell reads Tolstoy while laying on the beach in Cozumel? (My personal answer: a lucky person!) I’ve never been the type to get into the Harry Potter or Twilight sagas, so if you’re like me, your summer reading life might lack a little structure.  Here are some reads that will go good with sun exposure and will distinguish you a bit from the 15 year old girls around the pool (ooh burn).

For the Foodie

My Life in France by Julia Child

Everyone around you is probably reading Julie & Julia before they hit the multiplex to see the adaptation starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. But even if you haven’t read that one yet, you could also start here, with Julia Child’s own recollections of her culinary genesis in the Paris kitchen of the apartment she shared with her loving husband, Paul.  Child was ebullient, confident and focused. You will be hard pressed not to feel inspired about your own passions after reading this memoir.

For the McSweeney’s Addict

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton

This book looks like a catalog for an auction selling off the banal and personal effects of a New York couple. But upon careful inspection, it’s actually the story of a relationship’s birth and subsequent going south. It’s the kind of book you can study over and over again. Plus, flip the book over. Dave Eggers and Amy Sedaris both love this book. Are you the kind of shallow, rather snobby person that buys a book because of the quotes on the back?  Whoops, I fell for it.

For the Girl Who Wears Black During the Summer

Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy

Meloy’s collection of eleven short stories is mostly about angsty lonely heartbreak, flawed relationships and broken souls written in restrained dead simple prose. It is precisely the kind of thing you could sink into during a long plane ride or shudder, should you get pulled into an old fashioned family vacation with your parents on a cruise ship. Take this book with you!

For the Adventuress

Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollstead

This should be an easy sell especially if you are the type that loves a good wilderness survival tale, like Into Thin Air – but…this is even more mind-boggling. This is a true story about an 11 year old boy surviving the plane crash that kills his iconoclastic father who was also an FBI man who used to take him surfing when he was 3. This is a clearly a rollicking good tale.

For the Girl with a Time Travel slash Pirate Fixation

Pirates by Linda Lael Miller

This is really a huge shout out to one of my oldest friends Sara who MAILED this book to me one summer, yes, a romance novel, because it’s just *that* good, full of heaving bosoms and adventures on the high sea!  A young lady takes a vacation to the Caribbean only to find herself transported to the year 1780 after riding the elevator in a historic hotel. She is quickly discovered and swept up into the world of Duncan Rourke, one hot pirate, who is also fighting against the British in the American Revolution. Cheesy, yes. A romance novel paperback, yes? Read it one sitting, yes? Read it again afterward…yes! HA. My snobbery. It has failed.