Summer reading should be easy to plow through. The last thing you want to do when you're sitting in a pool of sweat--or on a breezy beach--is to have to keep flipping back a page because you couldn't follow. If you have to struggle, you'll just end up taking a nap.

That doesn't mean you have to read trash. It just means the writing should be clean, compelling, and a little sexy--even if you're reading a cookbook.

With this criteria in mind, we submit our summer reading list, broken down by Smile and Act Nice categories. We'll add categories throughout the month of June.

Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Thirteen-year-old boy meets eleven-year old girl. Love letters, stolen glances, and secret meetings in the park. Welcome to the most spell-binding, beautiful, and heartbreaking love saga of all time. Decades pass, and the two continue in their separate passions. A must-read for anyone who's ever contemplated love and what it really means. -malin hansson
amazon.com buy Love in the Time of Cholera.

You could do worse than read nothing but Gabriel Garcia Marquez over and over again for the rest of your life...

The Autumn of the Patriarch Part of what makes this author's writing so compelling is how he presents both exultation and unthinkable horror with the same quiet ease of everyday domestic trifles. Written in an unpunctuated, stream-of-consciousness style, The Autumn of the Patriarch relates the sorrow, pride, munificence and brutatlity of an archetypal South American dictator trapped in his palace-prison. -nikol lohr
amazon.com buy The Autumn of the Patriarch.

Doctor Rat, Hermes 3000, Elephant Bangs Train, The Fan Man, Nightbook
William Kotzwinkle pre-1980
Sometimes I want to call Bill. I contemplated it, calling him, that is, or even stopping by. I was in his home state of Maine after all, traveling through the Northeast on a semi-camping sabbatical after quitting my job. Kotzwinkle was, and still is, one of my favorites. Wildly erratic characters fucking with your head, their dreams resembling yours in a flash as if you were born in the wrong body and it’s Kotzwinkle who’s been right all along. From Hermes 3000, at the beautiful Golden Cafeteria jealously guarded by old women, “The busboys were Puerto Rican. They did not give a damn. The cook was Chinese. He stood before the long, black stove, remembering his life as a Tang Dynasty king. Now he fried chicken croquettes. The eternal Tao casts one up and brings one down, he reckoned, moving quietly amid his steaming, sizzling pots and pans.”

I just needed to find out if it was Ronald Reagan that did it. His talent ruined and spirit broken by the end of the decade--god, I want to know what morass of desperation and self-hatred drove him to write the "book" to E.T., the "book" to Superman, Tthe Movie, and Christmas at Fontaine's. And Fata Morgana. And Queen of Swords.

It’s as if he died. And, by funereal design, most of his pre-1980 books are out of print. I have a first edition Doctor Rat I read in one day on the subway. I rode all the way to the end of the line on the F train through Queens reading it until I was forced to get off by a large black woman who told me she was going to"fuck me up." It was worth it. -louisa brinsmade
amazon.com buy Dr. Rat or The Fan Man.Hermes 3000, Elephant Bangs Train and Nightbook are out of print. Check your local library or a used book store. If you don't have any luck, try amazon.com's book locator.

Post Office
Charles Bukowski
For three days straight I followed the life of Chinaski--I felt the rain on his mail routes, became equally outraged at his crazy boss, and smiled at his insane need for sex. His favorite pet is a crazy dog named Picasso. Favorite girl? His wife, who through her maniacal bouts with chirping parrots and finding a career, ultimately becomes his own human, melodramatic drama queen. After a particularly nonsensical, estrogen-infused fight: "We kissed again. Then I picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, placed her on the bed, got my pants and shoes off fast, pulled her pants down over her shoes, and then with one shoe off and one on, I gave her the best ride in months....When I finished, I nursed her back slowly, playing with her long hair, telling her things. She purred. Finally she got up....She went into the kitchen and began doing dishes and singing....I had two Picassos on my hands." -malin hansson
amazon.com buy Post Office.

Galloway's Book on Running
By Jeff Galloway (1984, Shelter Publications)
Don't let the pub. date scare you, this book is the runner's bible and the wisdom it imparts is never going to be passe. And since summer is just beginning and most marathons are run in the fall and winter, I advise you to get started reading it right away. I promise that even if the thought of running around the block reduces you to tears right now, if you follow the training schedule in Galloway's book you'll be in shape to tackle the 26.2 before the millenium. I know because I did it a few years ago. It's a simple physiological thing really--as long as you are in the right health condition to begin a running program in the first place all you have to do is teach your body to burn fuel more efficiently through a regimen of regular training runs. Galloway guides you every step of the way, and before you realize it the mileage is gravy compared to the health and fitness benefits and the incredible sense of accomplishment it inspires. Pick up the book even if you don't feel like running an insane distance----I'm sort of in a rut right now and revisiting my dog-eared pages just may get me back on my feet for my regular five-milers. -jen scoville
amazon.com buy Galloway's Book on Running.

Prescription for Nutritional Healing
James F. Balch, M.D. Phyllis A. Balch, C.N.C.
This natural medicine book sets the alternative health industry standard for information, but it’s not quite as satisfyingly gross as my favorite medical book “Childhood Diseases” with its XXX gallery of skin eruptions, oozing tongue fungi, deformities, and warts on certain body parts. The Blachs’ nutritional guide is refreshingly matter of fact in its own way, however. For instance, did you know that “Leukorrhea” could be caused by “excessive douching, a vitamin B deficiency, the use of antibiotics or oral contraceptives, or… intestinal worms”? For god’s sake, go to the vet.

The whole book is pretty marvelous, and delightfully AMA-free, but there are a few alarming offenses. Here is the definition for frigidity: “Frigid women are unable to experience pleasure from sexual intercourse.” Blah, blah, blah about psychological origins or estrogen depletion, so improve your diet, take vitamins. Oh, and don’t forget to: “Avoid smog conditions. Smog is highly toxic and dangerous; it adversely affects immune functions, hormone activity, as well as a host of other body functions.” Don’t leave your black boot of a husband/boyfriend who turns you on not one bit. Blame yourself, see a shrink, and by all means, avoid the urban outdoors. That’ll make you hot. -louisa brinsmade
amazon.com buy Prescription for Nutritional Healing.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Milan Kundera
Every time I mention Milan Kundera, someone blurts out what a misogynist he is. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Misogynist or not, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting is one of those books that seems to outline Great Truths, in this case The Great Truths of Human Relationships (just as Gabriel Garcia Marquez outlines The Great Truths of Love and Sorrow). A collection of several interrelated stories, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting explores human doubts, indiscretions, love, and folly against the backdrop of a politically amorphous and transitory Czechoslovakia. It's at times sad, at times sweet, joyful, cynical, abrasively honest, but always True. -nikol lohr
amazon.com buy The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

Guide to Good Chess
C.J.S. Purdy
Forget therapy, study chess. And read Australian and International Master C.J.S. Purdy’s strategies. There are over 25,000 books on chess, but this one has a beautiful British Taoism I adore.
“Weaknesses must be fixed.”
“Where you have the choice, take or attack rather than attempt to run away or defend.”
“In serious chess, nobody ever dreams of asking for a move back; and such a request would be met with the same frozen horror with which the workhouse authorities received Oliver Twist’s request for more… Some people retract moves in ‘friendly’ play without even asking -- they are no better than professional thugs. Expunge their names from your visiting list.”
-louisa brinsmade
amazon.com buy Guide to Good Chess.

You Must Remember This
Joyce Carol Oates
Set in the 50s, that crazy time when the nuclear family was the ultimate key to happiness and being different was not yet televised. Through page after page you'll follow the trials and tribulations of the Stevick family. Their lovely daughters, with souls flying in all directions; Felix the uncle with the almost unnaccetable boxing profession; and the son whose political ways were forever changed during the war. Flourising prose, hardly any distracting commas or semicolons, and an aptly magnifiscent eye for personal detail: "...Among her trophies were a pair of white plastic harlequin sunglasses a tube of pink lip gloss a key chain with a rabbit's foot gold hoop earrings pear earrings rhinestone cluster earrings a simulated red leather wallet a small purse-sized plastic hairbrush several pairs of stockings a pair of good kidskin gloves she gave to her mother...." You try stopping reading. -malin hansson
[I love this one, too. My favorite scene is the ear-piercing in the kitchen that ends with the radio blaring If I Knew That You Were Coming, I'd Have Baked a Cake, "the happiest song of all." -nikol lohr]
amazon.com buy You Must Remember This.

West with the Night
Beryl Markham
A well-read friend told me that she couldn't bring herself to finish Beryl Markham's book because she didn't want the experience to end. That got me to the bookstore quick, but I must say I was a bit nervous when the clerk steered me past the fiction stacks and into biography. What I ended up with was a literary adventure.West with the Night is the memoir of a Britain-born woman who flew planes carrying passengers, mail and anything else that was needed over the remote expanse of Africa in the 1930s. Not only was she the first woman on the continent to get a pilot's license-in 1936 she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west-but she was also the first woman in Africa to be awarded a coveted horse trainer's license, a trade she learned from childhood on her father's East African farm. When she wasn't working with the horses, she was hunting elephant with the nearby Murani tribe. If you think Markham's life was remarkable, wait until you spend some time with her eloquent prose. Her beautifully crafted sentences are so full and at the same time so emotionally reserved, that they inspired Hemingway to humility. "I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer," he wrote to his friend Maxwell Perkins. Sisters, you should be ashamed if you don't check this one out. -jen scoville
amazon.com buy West With the Night.

Push
Sapphire
"I was left back when I was twelve because I had a baby for my fahver....This gonna be my second baby." So begins the story of Precious Jones--a tale of horrowing defeat that leads to motivation. Moving. Harsh. Real. You'll cry. You might smile. And you won't stop reading until you reach the end of this 200-something page debut novel treasure. Follow Precious on her almost impossible climb through the cracked windows of Harlem into a life completely free. If you read one book all summer this is the one. You'll forever be changed by Precious and her never-ceasing zest to belong to herself. -malin hansson
amazon.com buy Push.

The Garden of Eden
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway can make taking a nap seem like the most romantic thing in the world. In the posthumously-published The Garden of Eden American writer David Bourne and his beautiful young and devoted wife Catherine spend their days hopping from one charming European coastal town to another, washing down boiled eggs and caviar with bottles of Tavel, sunning and swimming off coves in the nude, making love in the middle of the day and lolling streetside in Spanish cafes. But Catherine has some issues she needs to work out, so she begins cutting her hair very short and practicing being a boy. Then she meets Marita and invites her first to stay with them and then to be with them. It's a titillating plan in theory, but after a few go-rounds and a few rounds of absinthe, the would-be menage a trois takes a turn. These characters' fate is a sad one, yes, but Hemingway's sensuous narrative is a perfect one for summer, elevating the simplest pleasures of sand, sun and surf while examining the darkest depths of desire. - jen scoville
amazon.com buy The Garden of Eden.

Summer Sisters
Jude Blume
I've loved her ever since I cooped myself up in my flower-curtained room to read "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." Here our girlie, all-time favorite author writes a saga of friendship and love, trust and understanding, once again bringing to mind those childhood summers when bare legs meant mosquitoes and drinking freshly made lemonade was the goal of each brilliant evening. If you adored Blume once, you rekindle it all over again. -malin hansson
amazon.com buy Summer Sisters.