by Seth Warburton

School is out and so is the sun; it’s summer!  It’s time to partake in the long-standing tradition of reading something frivolous.  There are books too gleefully violent for February, tomes too wantonly erotic for December, and titles so unserious that someone as discerning and successful as you just couldn’t possibly spare them the time to read.  But now that it’s socially acceptable to wear white trousers, everyone gets a free pass.  That’s not smut in your hand; in June, it’s a beach read. 

Summer is the time for slacking and refusing to let the events of the world get you down, at least until vacation ends.  Lana, the main character in “High Times in the Low Parliament,” has turned vacation into a lifestyle of sorts.  Her main occupations are idle flattery, stealing sweet kisses and staying just intoxicated enough to avoid worrying about the impending death of humanity’s last hope for peace (and also, incidentally, of Lana and most of the people she knows). When it comes to finding happiness wherever you are and whatever is happening, Lana takes the cake, and then she takes some shrooms.

Scandalous Hollywood biographies and memoirs are often recommended in summer, but don’t you sometimes worry that the people depicted might have feelings, or that there are people who care about them who have feelings?  Maybe that isn’t the kind of shame you want in a summer read.  Thankfully there are writers like Samantha Irby who lay bare only their own foibles and insecurities.  Her most recent collection of personal essays, “Quietly Hostile,” includes plenty of them, like when she analyzes the crowd-sourced tags on her favorite adult film.  There, maybe that’s the right kind of shame for your summer read?

When a reality TV dating program films on-site in the secluded Pacific Northwest, the four finalists find that they have bigger problems than the catty competition for the hand of a rich tech-mogul.  They’ll also have to survive whatever it is that’s watching them from the woods.  “Patricia Wants to Cuddle,” by Samantha Allen might just be the sort of satirically funny, romantic, survival horror, what-did-I-just-read? book that you’ll want to escape to this summer. 

Have a scandalous summer dalliance with a book, and let the staff at the Ames Public Library find just the right sort of guilty pleasure for you.