Getting Personal With Your Summer Reading : If you’re in search of a literary outing, catch up with an author at a book signing.

Take time out to squish some sand between your toes, catch up on fun reading and drift and dream a little this week. Then pencil in a visit to Barnes & Noble, Mysteries to Die For, the Phantom Bookshop and Ventura Bookstore, where interesting events and autographing authors will entertain and enlighten.

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Brian Tobin will sign his second mystery adventure “The Missing Person” at 1 p.m. Saturday in Mysteries to Die For, 2940 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. Once again, here’s an opportunity for anyone with a mystery work-in-progress to pick the brains of a published author.

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Phyllis Davies will be at Barnes & Noble at 1 p.m. Saturday to sign “Grief: Climb Toward Understanding.” Her guide offers practical advice on what to do when someone dies and examines the healing process that follows.

Then from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, Barnes & Noble will host the Ventura County Sheriff Search and Rescue Team, which will bring its equipment and demonstrate rescue techniques. Ten percent of sales made on Sunday will be donated to the rescue team.

And for a change of pace, Michael Schwartz and Heather Woodward will read at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the bookstore’s monthly poetry night. An opportunity for anyone to come out and share poetry is provided at the “open mike” segment, which follows the guest poets’ reading. The above events all take place at 4360 E. Main St., Ventura.

Susan Storch of Oxnard, an oncology nurse with a masters in psychology / thanatology (from the Greek thanatos meaning pertaining to death ) has been a hospice pioneer for the last 25 years. She will give a Conscious Dying seminar and discuss “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” at 2 p.m. Saturday at Ventura Bookstore, 522 E. Main St.

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Western film star Harry Carey, Jr. will sign his autobiography “Company of Heroes--My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Company” from 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday at the Phantom Bookshop, 451 E. Main St., Ventura. Carey worked in many of Ford’s classic films.

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Baseball cards and comic books are fun to collect and in some cases are increasingly valuable commodities. And once again Baseball, Sports Cards & Comic Book Exchange (for trading only, no cash sales) for 8- to 16-year-olds will take place at 4:30 p.m. Monday in the Newbury Park Library, 2331 Borchard Road. Call Barb Wilson at 493-2179 for details.

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Prestigious honors for Venturan Sharan Newman who has been nominated for a Macavity Award by Mystery Readers International Magazine. Newman’s medieval mystery “Death Comes as Epiphany” was voted best first novel of 1993 by readers of the magazine who are writers, fans and experts on the genre. Her second in the series “The Devil’s Door” was published early this year.