Books

We flatter ourselves that our readers are smarter than the harried business-class types scanning the paperback racks at the airport. We also flatter ourselves that our anterior deltoids are breathtaking and poolworthy. But you know what? All the deltoid-enhancing incline presses in the world won't make us look as pretty at the pool as a worn but well-loved copy of an awesome book.

At the same time, reading Marcel Proust in the months between May and September is trying way too hard, like wearing an ascot to a barbecue.

We asked six area writers for summer reading recommendations. The guideline was simple. The books had to be fun but meatier than the USA Today best-seller list. We were fascists in our dogmatic adherence to this guideline. Without pointing fingers, one of these local writers (whose name can be rearranged to spell CRAM TAINT OFT) suggested Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Nobody loves Thomas Pynchon as much as we do, except for Mrs. Pynchon, but Gravity's Rainbow does not constitute fun summer reading.

Following are the suggestions and commentaries of these writers, and — because you're clever and love word games — corresponding anagrams for their names.

Debra Di Blasi is the supercool author of the Thorpe Menn Book Award-winning Drought & Say What You Like and, most recently, The Jiri Chronicles, published in March by FC2 (an imprint of the University of Alabama Press). She's a self-described "multimodal artist," she lives in Kansas City, and BALSA BIRD DIE is one anagram for her name.

"I love J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories — they're actually a threaded narrative, if you pay attention to the relationships. Salinger doesn't always give you the connections between the characters. I read 'For Esme, With Love and Squalor' every couple of years. I really love Salinger, and I have no guilt about reading Nine Stories over and over and over again.

"I'd also recommend Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events — I like the darkness, but he also weaves learning into the narrative, using arch, funny definitions of words in the text. Plus, I think kids actually want to be scared. And that first line — 'If you're interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book' — that's so excellent because it makes you want to read it. Too bad for the parents who think it's not good for their kids.

"Other than that, I like reading Sotheby's Real Estate online — it's a luxury real-estate Web site. I like looking at huge, ridiculous, luxury-priced homes that I'll never be able to afford. And I read Vanity Fair. It's a slicker, higher-brow People with better photography."

Stanley E. Banks is an artist-in-residence at Avila University, where he teaches creative writing and African-American literature. A prolific poet and writer, he is the recipient of the Langston Hughes Prize for Poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Writers Place Award. If you're seeking an anagram for his name, look no further than ABSENT SKY ELAN.

"Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress is a lot of fun. The book is about Easy Rawlins. basically a private eye by accident, by necessity. He needs work and he gets entangled in a political intrigue. He's searching for a woman — the devil in the blue dress.

"The message is about race and the color line. That's the subtext, but it plays itself out in the concept of 'finding your place' — in black literature, there's a theme about 'passing.' Lena Horne could pass. There was a racist element that would make a black person pass for white if they could. But if you do, you're psychologically damaged because you don't know who you are. That's what Walter Mosley weaves into his murder mysteries — and it's really entertaining because of the genre elements.

"It's been awhile since I first read it, way back in the late '90s. It just blew me away. You learn how racism has been turned inward, 'til you've got black folks that turn on one another. Walter Mosley deals with those issues."

Matt Fraction is a Thomas Pynchon enthusiast and a rising talent in the comic-book industry. He's the writer of The Five Fists of Science and Casanova, both published by Image, as well as the more interesting issues of Marvel's Punisher War Journal. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, and his name can be rearranged to spell TACIT RAM FONT.

"Since Kurt Vonnegut died recently, that's a pretty good excuse to review his body of work — Breakfast of Champions is one of those great, life-changing books. Plus it has illustrations, so it's perfect for summer reading.

"I read it when I was 13 or 14, and it was given to me by the coolest art teacher I ever had — same guy who turned me on to the Clash and Iggy Pop. He gave me Breakfast of Champions as though it were a bag of weed and said, 'Don't tell anybody where you got this.' Anytime I pick it up, I can't simply browse it — I can't stop myself from reading 50 to 100 pages at a stretch.