BOOKS:
Type by type

Books for balconies, bars and beaches

by JULIET WATERS

Based on books reviewed this year or books to be reviewed in the next few months, here’s a guide for all your summer reading needs.

For the balcony: Browsable books are best where you’re likely to be distracted by neighbours, power saws, jack hammers or whatever sounds bless your particular urban paradise. Anthologies are good: Best American Non-Required Reading 2005, edited by Dave Eggers and a group of California high school students has a good selection of visceral stories and essays. BlackBook magazine celebrates 10 years of “frolicking in the shallows as well as the deep end” with The Revolution Will be Accessorized, a collection of features from writers ranging from Augusten Burroughs to Joan Didion.

Depending on the weather: Very small short books are also good for the balcony, especially on humid days when concentration starts to ebb. Beauty Is a Liar by Valerie Joy Kalynchuk and Dreadful Paris by Melissa A. Thompson are both promising miniature novels distributed by local publishers (Conundrum Press and Snare, respectively). If it gets windy, however, you’ll want something that won’t fly away if you have to answer the phone. No danger of that with An Inconvenient Truth, the companion coffee table book to Al Gore’s hit documentary about climate change. Plus, beautiful pictures of environmental disasters are just the thing to get you in the mood for summer drinking.

For bars and terrasses: Always good to have a light novel in case you find yourself waiting for that friend who’s always late or don’t want to look too self-conscious as you trawl for new friends. Pierre Merot’s recently translated French bestseller Mammals is like Nick Hornby with more drinking and without the happy ending. Jack Fish by J Milligan is a surreal, funny noir parody about a detective from Atlantis navigating his way through Manhattan. Deborah Eisenberg’s collection of short stories, Twilight of the Superheroes is compelling, brilliant and has a cover that will definitely get you noticed. Just don’t get drunk and leave it behind.

For the beach: If you’re planning a trip to the east coast, you might want to skip David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster. But if you have no plans to eat giant underwater insects, Wallace is at his best in this recent collection of essays. Lynne Coady’s Mean Boy is a funny, smart novel about university life in the Maritimes. Welcome to Yesterday by Ian Spiegelman looks like a gossipy, compelling thriller. Spiegelman’s a former Page Six reporter whose last book Everyone’s Burning was a summer reading hit. Eden Collinsworth’s It Might Have Been What He Said looks like an elegant page turner and has this promising first sentence: “Isabel could remember the precise moment she tried killing her husband. Strangely enough she couldn’t recall why.”

For regression: Young Adult fiction is flying off the shelves these days due to sales or publisher recalls. If you’re an Ageing Adult looking for a good dose of nostalgia, however, two coming-of-age stories set in 1982 should fit the bill. David Mitchell follows up his hugely successful Cloud Atlas with another brilliant novel about a young boy growing up in muddiest Worcestershire, Black Swan Green. Amanda Boyden does the girls’ version of ’80s angst self-destruction (not to mention three-word titles) with Pretty Little Dirty. Might want to dust off those Black Flag, Elvis Costello and Duran Duran albums if you can still find them.

For kids or very neurotic adults: Scaredy Squirrel by Montreal writer Melanie Watt is a witty, charming tale with great illustrations about a squirrel with obsessive compulsive disorder. Good for both young and older kids, or anyone you know who’s afraid of poison ivy, killer bees, germs and sharks.