This summer, we’re reading a few of our favorite things.

Hot Flings
Instant Love, by Jami Attenberg
The summer’s must-read. A sweet, smart, sad, and sexy novel told in interrelated fragments, following three women from teen years into quasi-adulthood. About where we look for love, and what we find.

The Dressmaker, by Elizabeth Oberbeck
 A French bride-to-be and the old-fashioned man who makes her wedding gown fall madly in love. Oh, l’amour doux …

Gone with the Windsors, by Laurie Graham
A fizzy, fabulous account of the infamous courtship between Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales, as seen through the eyes of Wally’s fictional best friend — dizzy, ditsy Baltimore heiress Maybell Brumby.

Short Shorts
The First Hurt, by Rachel Sherman
Smart, edgy stories about the weird, elusive ways families and loved ones cause each other pain. Gorgeous and reminiscent of Mary Gaitskill.

The Collected Stories, by Amy Hempel
All four of the beloved writer’s perfect volumes of shorts (including one that’s been out of print for years) are now available in a single book — which you should never, ever loan out, because you won’t get it back.

Funny Girls
Microthrills: True Stories from a Life of Small Highs, by Wendy Spero
Hilarious memoir about growing up eccentric in Manhattan, with lots of laugh-so-hard-you-snort-milk-out-your-nose moments.

Queen of the Oddballs, by Hillary Carlip
Hilarious memoir about coming of age eccentric and gay in Hollywood. Ditto the milk-snorting funniness.

Bad Boys
The Catastrophist, by Lawrence Douglas Kingsley
Amis meets Philip Roth meets Richard Russo in this witty, raucous novel about a young professor who starts to head downhill, sanity-wise, when his wife gets pregnant — and then keeps rolling.

Suspension, by Robert Westfield
A nice gay boy goes loony after he’s dumped by his boyfriend and terrorists attack the Twin Towers. He hides in his apartment for months, trying to figure things out. Fast-paced and weirdly funny.

Fabulous Diversions
The Week-End Book, by Francis Meynell
This season’s hostess gift. Adorable novelty item, first published in the UK in 1924, includes info on how to forecast the weather, make your own paper cups, plus suggestions about games to play in the country and a little pastoral poetry.

Doing Nothing: a History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America, by Tom Lutz
Put your lazy ass — ahem, philosophical devotion to idleness — in social and cultural context with this witty look at the layabout.