BOOKS:
Page burners

Addiction, single-chick fiction, deck satire: a guide to the season’s special reading needs

by JULIET WATERS

Obviously this list is only for readers resistant to the charms of “The One Who Cannot Be Reviewed” (since no advance copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be sent out). Culled from Mirror reviews in the last few months, these have been categorized according to your special reading needs. For the many who plan to blow their summer reading budget on the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series, it’ll be in bookstores June 21 (as if you didn’t know).

Best alternative to the boy wizard: One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry. Just because you’re not so wild about Harry, doesn’t mean you have to miss out on arrested development. Barry’s latest collection of comics is a brilliantly funny take on the trauma, horror and general disappearance of magic that accompanies adolescence. The step-by-step guide to a Zen painting exercise will help you exorcise your own demons, and learn a new summer hobby.

Best plane, train or automobile book: For those who like to buy local, Taras Grescoe’s The End of Elsewhere is an irreverent account of his travels to the most touristy places on Earth and an argument for staying in Montreal. But Geoff Dyer’s Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It is arguably the best collection of travel essays to come out in years, even if he admits to making some of it up. For trashy mystery fans, the latest Janet Evanovich paperback, Hard Eight, continues with the adventures of Stephanie Plum, the big-hair bounty hunter from Jersey.

Best page-turner: The Story of Jane Doe by Jane Doe. You might not think a book about a rape victim’s 11-year battle to sue the Toronto Police department would make for entertaining summer reading, but Doe’s witty, punkish sense of humour holds one’s attention throughout this illustrated and suspenseful memoir.

Best resource: The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex by Cathy Winks and Anne Semans. Recently revised, this guide really does live up to its claim to being the most comprehensive sex guide ever written. Whether you’re straight, gay, celibate, looking to lose your virginity, or maintain an active senior’s lifestyle, this is the book for you.

Best satire: Carina Chocano’s Do You Love Me or Am I Just Paranoid? The Serial Monogamist’s Guide to Love is not just a hilarious satire of relationship advice books, it also offers some actual insight like: “...serial monogamy is now the norm. Consequently, there’s no reason to keep looking upon it as some kind of repetitive failure pattern. Maybe we should just start regarding it as a flower pattern or paisley.” If you’re too cool for love you may prefer The Hipster Handbook by Robert Lanham. Make sure you use words like “deck” and “fin” as much as possible this summer, so that everyone will know just how hip you really are.

Best addiction memoir: Dry by Augusten Burroughs. Yeah, yeah, I know everyone else is reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, but it doesn’t have a patch on Burrough’s follow-up to Running With Scissors.

Best single-chick stories: When the Messenger Is Hot by Elizabeth Crane. This debut may remind some readers of Lorrie Moore’s dry and poignant tragicomedy. Crane’s story about a girl who goes to AA meetings to pick up guys has got to be one of the best satires of the recovery movement ever written.

Best hobby book: One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry (see first category) and Knitting Pretty by Kris Percival. You may think summer is no time to take up knitting, but this book by a “reformed publicist” from Brooklyn has some great summer projects. A halter top, kerchiefs, cool bags and beer cozies. Why would you want to keep your beer warm? You don’t. You want to protect your hands from those cold, slimy, bathtub beer parties, and your beer from party beer thieves. Also you want to practice knitting in the round, so you’ll be ready for mittens.