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SUMMER BOOKS, SUMMER SONGS: We’ve got our 10 Summer Books You Have to Read list all ready for you, which isn’t an easy thing for us to do, but we’re paid well.

We hope by now you have a Kindle or iPad or, if you just have to be different, a Nook, because these books in their primitive, Space Age form are a lot to cart around with you all season.

Because we want you to read all of them, they’re in no particular order, although, now that we look at them all lined up on the (virtual) bookshelf, it’s pretty close to our order of preference.

“The Sojourn,” Andrew Krivak — It’s a fairly short, brisk story that covers a lot of ground, from late -19 th- century Colorado to Austria-Hungary to the horror of World War I trench warfare and the aftermath of all that. It’s beautifully written and uplifting even through all the tragedy.

“2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America,” Albert Brooks — This isn’t a comedy, though bits of Brooks come through in the dialogue. The part about what happens to America that we like least? A 9.0 earthquake in Southern California.

“Bullfighting: Stories,” Roddy Doyle — Bitterly funny at times, mostly not so much, in this collection that centers mostly on the grim life of middle-aged men. Great writing throughout, though, by Ireland’s best.

“Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace,” David Lipsky — Literally just a transcription of a long, long recorded interview with the often brilliant DFW and, tragically, frequent interjections by the annoying interviewer. Our recommendation is to skip the italics.

“In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin,” Erik Larson — Haven’t read it. We need some beach reading, too. And this one by the author of “The Devil in the White City” is on deck.

“Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice,” Alissa Hamilton — We learned a lot of interesting and, frankly, off-putting facts about orange juice in this fascinating book. (Really? Coca-Cola, which owns Minute Maid, and Pepsi, which owns Tropicana, are going to pull some fast ones on us poor consumers?) But we still drink it.

“Crime: Stories,” Ferdinand Von Shirach — Strange and compellingly twisty crimes and trials collected by German defense attorney Von Shirach, the Oliver Sacks of courtroom drama.

“The Wave,” Susan Casey — The author examines every aspect of waves, from your basic household wave to the gigantic waves tackled by the most death-wishful of surfers to the tsunamis that ruin everything. You’ll want to scootch back from the shoreline a bit when you’re reading this one.

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot — An amazing story of how the cells from a young migrant worker and poor mother of five who died of cancer in 1951 changed the course of science. Her cells continue to live on, though few, till now, have known her story.

“You Think That’s Bad,” Jim Shepard — You get the feeling that Shepard does a novel’s worth of research for every story he writes. In this fourth collection of fact-packed fictions he writes about 15 th- century France, the lost citadel of the Assassins, World War II Papua New Guinea and lots more — Godzilla, for instance — while keeping things manageable on the personal side. No matter where he goes or what he takes on, there’s someone like you in the yarns.

FRIDAY PLAYLIST: Don’t have time for books? Listen to these bookish tunes instead.

1. “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Leon Russell

2. “1984,” Spirit

3. “Tom Sawyer,” Rush

4. “Moby Dick,” Led Zeppelin

5. “Catcher in the Rye,” Belle & Sebastian

6. “Mildred Pierce,” Sonic Youth

7. “Animal Farm,” George Orwell

8. “Wuthering Heights,” Kate Bush

9. “(Who Wrote) The Book of Love,” the Monotone

10. “Book of Love,” Fleetwood Mac.

Tim Grobaty can be reached at tgrobaty@yahoo.com or 562-499-1256.

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