An alternate summer's reading list for 2004.

SOMEHOW, SOMEWHERE along the line, it became a kind of definition. "Summer reading" implied much more than simply a book you might happen to read during that particular season. It implied a book that is light, breezy, likely a little trashy, something you didn't need to concentrate on too hard, yet something you could still get lost in. Something happy. Something to be read outside, while wearing sunscreen and a floppy hat of some sort.

In short, "summer reading" has become synonymous with "crap." Publishers are fully aware of this, and set up their publication calendars to feed that perception. That's why this summer, like every summer, there's a new Danielle Steel novel available, and a new James Patterson mystery, and a new John Grisham novel. That sensitive, warm-hearted Nicholas Sparks (a favorite of moms everywhere) has a hefty new memoir out, too.

But it doesn't have to be like that. Those are hardly your only choices as a reader this summer. When I was younger, I always set the summers aside for Camus, Beckett, maybe a Russian or two. I think it was my way of counteracting all those lively, bouncy, smiling faces I saw around me all summer long. The endless sunshine and the heat always left me feeling rotten-but instead of trying to escape that feeling with, say, the latest Don Pendleton "novel," I fed it with the darkest, dreariest titles I could find.

Thinking I can't possibly be alone in this, I've compiled a brief list of some new and grim books for the summer of 2004.

Lolly Winston's new novel seems as good a place as any to begin. Good Grief (Warner, 352 pages, $18) is a sometimes darkly comic, often just dark look at a young newlywed whose husband dies of cancer shortly after their wedding. She finds it nearly impossible to cope, and her behavior becomes increasingly erratic.

Tom Perotta, probably best known for writing Election, is back with Little Children (St. Martin's, 368 pages, $24.95), an Altmanesque peek into the desperate, sad lives of the people tucked away in a suburban neighborhood. All of his characters here are somehow defined by their relationships with children-from the uptight, overachieving Supermom, to the child molester, to the high school golden boy who never amounted to anything.

A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That, the new novel by Lisa Glatt (Simon & Schuster, 304 pages, $22), concerns a lonely and confused thirtysomething poetry teacher who lives with her mother while she and her (equally misguided and dysfunctional) friends try, and fail, to connect with something real-especially love, Did I mention the mother is dying of cancer? I wouldn't call Glatt's novel "grim" exactly, but there is a melancholy air about it, a sweet sadness and a sense of loss you'd normally expect to find in the fall lineup.

If you don't care for novels, preferring instead to read about the miserable lives of real people, there's plenty of that to be found, too.

Goat, Brad Land's memoir (Random House, 224 pages, $22.95) came out earlier this year, but is still worth taking a look at. When he was 20, Land picked up two hitchhikers who beat, robbed and kidnapped him. This left him understandably screwed up, with an overwhelming sense of isolation and alienation. At college, in an effort to feel like he actually "belonged" somewhere, he decided to join a frat. Things quickly turned even uglier for him.

If you're more interested in the dark underbelly of the other half of the Greek system, there's Alexandra Robbins' Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities (Hyperion, 380 pages, $23.95). Robbins wrote that much-ballyhooed Skull and Bones expose last year, and this new book isn't winning her any friends among the nation's sororities, who are being all bitchy and catty about it. It seems she discovered that underneath the smooth and unblemished surface, sororities are actually hotbeds of binge drinking, drug abuse, eating disorders and overwhelming, sometimes brutal peer pressure! Who could've imagined?

It's not really "new," but there's a newly released movie tie-in edition of Alexander Trocchi's first novel, Young Adam (Grove, 146 pages, $12) available now. Camus' influence on the young Trocchi is clear in this story of a young, disaffected barge hand who discovers a woman's body in the water. He then gets drawn into a hopeless web of intrigue when it becomes clear he's not telling all he knows.

If all of this seems too namby-pamby for you, all these "sad" books about "sad" and "lost" people, you could go straight for the stinking, hateful viscera, the lowest of the low, the worst humanity has to offer, and try to get your hands on Peter Sotos' new limited-edition book, Selfish, Little: The Annotated Lesley Ann Downey (Void, 192 pages, $60). It's only available through mail-order and only 1000 are being printed, but if you're interested in taking a savage, unrelenting look into the mind of a violent, sexually depraved human beast, well, Sotos is your man. Even after all these years, he still puts all those would-be sleazeballs (you know who I mean) to shame. If this one's sold out, a few of his earlier efforts-they're all pretty sick-are still in print. Talk about perfect reading for the beach.

And if you don't mind a little shameless self-promotion on the part of New York Press, this season also marks the release of several new books by Press alumni.

George Tabb's Playing Right Field (Soft Skull, 220 pages, $13.95), a harrowing (but hilarious) account of his childhood in Greenwich, CT, was released in April. My new book came out in May. Little Ned Vizzini's first novel, Be More Chill (Hyperion, 288 pages, $16.95), which comes out in June, concerns a high school dork who learns how to be cool after ingesting a pill-sized supercomputer. And if you can wait until July, you can pick up a copy of Jonathan Ames' latest novel, Wake Up, Sir! (Scribner, 352 pages, $23).

Or, if none of the above strikes your fancy, you might want to consider The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness (Random House, 272 pages, $24.95) by New Yorker staff writer Jerome Groopman. After all, if you're doing your reading at the beach while trying to get a nice tan, you may need it later once the skin cancer takes hold.