Few pleasures say summer like sand between the toes and a good book between the fingers — and this summer, we suggest picking up a few well-written, lighthearted reads that won’t take up all of the room in your Tory Burch tote.

‘I Was Told There’d Be Cake’
by Sloane Crosley (Riverhead)

Much has been made in book circles about a certain publicist-to-the-literary stars whose debut collection of personal essays garnered quick and glowing praise from a throng of establishment writers. But Sloane Crosley is, as it turns out, the real thing: a sharp, unwaveringly honest, funny essayist with a spot-on flair for exposing everyday foibles. In “The Pony Problem,” a paranoid Ms. Crosley imagines her loved ones stumbling upon her set of plastic toy ponies after she is suddenly pushed to her death from a subway platform or crushed by falling scaffolding. The sidesplitting “The Ursula Cookie” finds Ms. Crosley beset by unintended consequences after she calls in sick to work, blaming her absence on the death of an (already deceased) aunt. The stories will have a special appeal for the generation of women who wore stirrup pants, carried Esprit book bags, and could hum Belinda Carlisle songs before they had ever heard of the Go-Go’s.

‘Chasing Harry Winston’
by Lauren Weisberger (Simon & Schuster)

It could not have been easy to write the follow-up novel to 2003’s best-selling “The Devil Wears Prada,” about an assistant’s hellish year at a magazine that by all accounts bore a striking resemblance to Vogue. Lauren Weisberger’s sophomore effort, “Everyone Worth Knowing,” was critically panned. But the third time might be the charm for the 31-year-old author, whose “Chasing Harry Winston” eschews the tired chick-lit tropes that gave rise in print to legions of whiny, calorie-counting Bridget Jones-style heroines in the late 1990s. In the new book, Ms. Weisberger introduces a trio of successful friends on the cusp of 30, living in Manhattan. Far from simply chasing the five-carat stone in a Cartier micro-pavé setting, the girlfriends guide each other through breakups and mishaps, in search of relationships as satisfying as the “truffles Mac-and-cheese at the Waverly Inn.”

‘Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon — and the Journey of a Generation’
by Sheila Weller (Atria)

While Roberta Joan Anderson was at college in the city of Saskatoon in Canada, she edited a column in which she dispensed fashion tips and forecast fads. This was followed by a postgraduate job “in fashion,” modeling junior sportswear for a local retail outlet. Fortunately for the generations of fans who would discover and (rediscover) the 1971 album “Blue,” Ms. Anderson was persuaded to sing some of her poetry at a local café one night and Joan Anderson soon became Joni Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell and two of her iconic contemporaries, Carole King and Carly Simon, are the subjects of an illuminating three-part biography that makes the case for how and why these women became the voices and models for a generation of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Writer Sheila Weller’s account darts back and forth among the folk-pop singers, capturing the music, freewheeling love lives, and shifting politics in expansive four-year blocks.

‘Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World’s Most Coveted Handbag’
by Michael Tonello (William Morrow)

A self-described “leather liaison,” author Michael Tonello made a business of circumventing the French boutique’s legendary two-year waiting list (now considerably slackened, according to reports), racking up Birkins as if they were Birkinstocks, and then hawking them to status-hungry bidders on eBay. “I’d never really been the horsey type, I guess,” Mr. Tonello writes, explaining his initial shock at the fervor with which his buyers snatched items — silk scarves, playing cards — stamped with the Hermès “H.” How did he do it? Well, the globe-trotting entrepreneur parts with his trade secrets in this amusing account.