One of the best things about summer is having a vacation, with the time to read. But, like many people, especially those of us who plan to retire about eight years after our own death, I don’t vacation.

Not really.

I do give myself little vacations in the summer – a night at a bed-and-breakfast, the pleasure of a daily swim. Most especially, I give myself time to read.

This isn’t to say that I don’t read all the time. I read all the time, two or three books a week. Last year, when I twice visited a friend who lives in the South Pacific (ah, just saying that makes me want to weep), I learned how book-dependent I really am. Before I left, I carefully set out on my bed the two indispensable items for the trip – my newly acquired Kindle, stocked with 17 books, and my credit card. They were still there when the United jet took off from O’Hare. Although another pal immediately sent them along, the package couldn’t clear customs because there was a spontaneous holiday week declared honoring the national soccer team. Several times, I went back begging for my parcel, which I could actually see, but to no avail. When I got back to the United States, it was on my bed.

I was left to my own devices at my pal’s house. He was away on a family trip with his relatively new bride and rapidly, I plundered the shelves and read … everything. I read books on firearms and the history of rock music. I read spy novels and manuals that set forth ways to prune Oriental shrubs. I read books on Taoism and cave painting. I read Dickens and Dave Barry. I stopped at Danielle Steele (no offense, Danielle). I almost went nutty.

So now, I have my summer arsenal at the ready. For a mini-vacation, all I need is a glass of ice tea (or maybe orange juice and Perseco), a puffy quilt, a wide-open window on the gloaming and … some of these:

Black Hills by Dan Simmons – with previous novels such as: The Terror (what really happened to those guys stranded on the good ship Erebus? listen, thems as died was the lucky ones) and Drood (this brilliant novel is about the rivalry between Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, as well as Dickens’ uncompleted last novel, which may or may not have been based on a real monster). Simmons has proven he can take history and knit fantasy into it like Madame DeFarge. I can’t wait to see what he does with the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Half-Broke Horses – A Non-Fiction Novel By Jeanette Walls. Knowing Jeanette slightly, and also knowing that she literally bears the scars of growing up homeless, drenched in the dreams of her mad parents (Glass Castle), I can’t wait to read this story of her West-Texas grandmother. This sort of sketch-as-sketch-can is also the only way I could write a true-life novel of my own, and I’m about to do that.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson – Having just become one of the last three people in America to see the Swedish film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and marveled at it, and having already read The Girl Who Played with Fire, I literally have to hold myself back each night from beginning the third in Larsson’s trilogy – all the more precious because there will be no other books by this daring, brilliant Swede who died before learning he had conquered the literary world. I also think (you will find this creepy) that Lisbeth Salander would be the perfect match for one of my sons.

The Stormchaser by Jenna Blum – They’re twins and estranged. One twin is a boy; one’s a girl. The guy, Charles, now in his 30s, is schizophrenic and hospitalized, but fascinated by chasing tornadoes. Anything that features twins and tornadoes is jake with me. I love Blum’s writing to pieces.

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen – The last Quindlen novel I loved, loved, loved was Blessings, in 2002. But after reading just two pages of this one, I had to rip my eyes away from the page (it was only May and knowing how fast I devour books, I needed to “diet”). Anna Quindlen knows the deepest textures of family tenderness and terror, and how sometimes, those two elements are part of one bouquet.

Innocent, by Scott Turow – I’ve loved every book Scott ever wrote and he also once called my then-two-year-old daughter one of the most fascinating human beings he’d ever met. With the bet that critics who aren’t so wowed by this sequel simply are reacting to the uber-splash of Presumed Innocent so many years ago, I may just save this one for last.