Sometimes the very best of all summer books is a blank notebook. Get one big enough, and you can practice sketching the lemon slice in your drink or the hot lifeguard on the beach or the vista down the hill from your cabin.

If you're not big enough to lose, you're not big enough to win.

You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

Late summer is perfect for classic mysteries - think of Raymond Chandler's hot Santa Anas and Agatha Christie's Mediterranean resorts - while big ambitious works of nonfiction are best approached in September and early October, when we still feel energetic and the grass no longer needs to be cut.

My back's not big enough for the number of targets on it.

If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.