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I read year round but summer is when I give myself huge chunks of time on a dock or a beach or by the pool to do what I love most: lose myself in a story. Some people think “summer reads” should be light and fun, like the season. My favorite summer reads are dense, thrilling and long.

“Rules of Civility,” by Amor Towles. A slight but nicely written coming-of-age story set in 1938 New York. Katey Kontent (I’m not kidding) is an orphan. She lives at a boarding house and works as a secretary. Glamorous Eve Ross befriends her. When the two girls meet the cute, rich Tinker Grey all three lives change forever. Scenes of 1930s New York and its wealthy playgrounds are beautifully described; reading this, you are there. My gripe: this story lacks drama. It’s “The Devil Wears Prada” without Meryl Streep. It’s “The Great Gatsby” without a love story.

“Sometimes a Great Notion,” by Ken Kesey. Drama, and then some! Kesey’s 1964 epic is 715 pages of American literature at its best, and most heightened. Think Whitman, Ginsberg, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Jim Harrison telling this story, of a town, a business, an industry, a strike and the undoing of an American family. It’s so rich I had to put it down for a day. Will they get the logs down river in time? Will Lee seduce his brother’s wife? I was often surprised and tremendously moved by this magnificently told story. And, its ending is perfect.

“Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter,” by Tom Franklin. A great title (it’s how children in Mississippi are taught to spell their state) for a ho-hum story. A teenage girls goes missing from a small town. A middle-age man whose date disappeared years earlier is the suspect. But someone has shot him; until he comes to, we can’t know. Where do we go from here? Backwards, to the man’s childhood and troubled friendship with a black boy who is now the town’s constable. Also the more recent past, when this tremendously lonely man is befriended by a sociopath. A noisy, predictable read.