Five books that won't fail to pique your interest this summer

It's summer vacation, which is not only a great time for travel, internship or watching the World Cup - but also one of the best times of the year to kick back and catch up on some reading.

One of my bookworm friends professes to reread Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time every summer, saying it's the best season to immerse yourself in the author's sultry tales of the past and the sweltering days of indolence, rendered in his distinctive dreamlike state.

After reading the first dozen pages last summer, I set aside the first volume of In Search of Lost Time and left it to gather dust on my night stand. Instead, I decided to finish Miguel de Cervantes' entertaining Don Quixote before opening Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures on Don Quixote.