A Path for Escape Between Softcover Pages

When I start to see packs of girls wearing open-toe platform shoes, low-slung cutoffs and multihued bathing-suit tops swigging iced soy chai lattes, I know summer has arrived. And with it, the annual question is posed: Whatever shall I read while beached poolside?

In case you are stumped in the months without Rs, I humbly offer a few time-tested tips.

First and foremost, if you are like me, summer equals escape, which is precisely what I look for in my summer reads, fiction or non-. Whether I budgeted well enough to enjoy my literary selections overseas or in my own backyard, at the very least I want to feel that I have traveled.

I also tend to favor books about people whose existence is so different from mine that when I die I won’t feel I missed out on anything life had to offer--because I didn’t, because I lived a thousand lives in books.

As a rule, I do not believe in the hardcover between June and August. I like them better on my bedside table, in winter, rather than taking up valuable space in my suitcase, a spot far better suited for a trinket purchased abroad. Generally, hardcovers stink of complexity and grown-up stuff anyway, and they look dangerously sophisticated next to a glossy magazine, also excellent for summer reading. I am also no stranger to the dreaded self-help workbook. What better way to make use of your bronzing time than armed with a sparkly pen, an umbrella drink and a list of questions for and about you?

To avoid accusations of frivolousness, I suggest getting in at least one classic, one bestseller and something more to brag about other than your tan.

So whether you are curling up underneath a cabana at a four-star spa or in a pal’s poorly constructed hammock, you really can’t go wrong in the reading department so long as you think “escape.”

That is why, this summer, if I am lucky, I will wake up in a fancy hotel with amnesia and a suitcase full of money, befriend a child with a giant’s disorder, accept a job as a hit man on the sleazy Las Vegas Strip, nurse my ailing husband back to health after a boat injury to the head, wantonly judge others from my filthy one-room apartment and get in touch with my inner goddess.

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Moon Zappa is the author of “America the Beautiful” (2000, Simon & Schuster).