Summer is fast approaching, and while I will be spending mine doing, well, pretty much what I do every day right now, I assume and hope that some of you will be going to the beach. So I thought I would take this opportunity to recommend some books that I read recently which you might want to bring with you.

The book I am currently reading, and will probably be reading for several weeks at the rate I am going, is Taylor Branch’s “Parting the Waters,” the Pulitzer-Prize winning first volume in his series about the civil rights movement. I actually bought this book many years ago, but it is over a thousand pages long, and every time I took it off the shelf I would stare at it for a few minutes, mutter to myself “this just isn’t happening,” and put it back. A few weeks ago, I decided that it would become my official Treadmill Reading Material, and man am I glad I did—it is absolutely riveting. I have read lots of books about the civil rights movement, but this is the best. It is exhaustively researched and brilliantly written. Go get it.

The second is “Starting Out in the Evening” by Brian Morton. I actually came across this one by accident—I read some reviews of the movie that just came out based on the book, and so many of the movie reviewers gushed about the book itself that I decided to check it out of the library. It’s about the relationship between an elderly, marginally successful writer, a woman who decides to write her graduate thesis about him and becomes personally attached, and the elderly author’s adult daughter. I know, it sounds either weird or lame, but it’s actually a great book.

Last but not least is “The Night Gardener” by George Pelecanos. Pelecanos is one of the writers for my favorite TV show, “The Wire,” so when the fourth season ended, I decided I had to check out one of his books. And then I read another, and another, and another. They are exactly what you would expect from the guy who helps produce the outstanding writing for The Wire: superbly written detective stories with absolutely fascinating, believable characters. They are perfect for the beach.