Summer reading tends to be like diet soda: sweet, manufactured taste, nothing heavy to weigh you down -- but nothing nutritious, either. And that's OK; everyone can use a little Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, or Maryanne Keyes to while away lazy hours on the plane; at the beach; or in the boat, cabin, tent, train, and, of course, the car. But couldn't you -- busy auto industry executive that you are -- really use that time for something better?

My favorite summer authors are no less famous, and the reading no less thrilling, captivating, and au courant than your typical summer bestseller. There are the modern science classics like Frank Gillett's gripping Organic IT and all the sequels, the rags-to-riches tale How Brands Succeed Online, and my new fave, Nikki Baird's coming-of-age tearjerker, Digital Signage Grows Up. Yes, Forrester Research has thousands of exciting page-turners in genres like:

• Travel. If you want to know what the locals are really like, lose Lonely Planet; instead, bring along a Forrester Consumer Technographics® report for North America or Europe. If you're going to booming BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries, ditch Berlitz and pick up Lost In Translation: Why Business Users And Offshore Outsourcers Can't Communicate. Be sure to also check out how GM manages outsourcers so deftly. Stuck in economy class? Nothing will get you upgraded faster than flashing The Quality-Focused Traveler to the agent at check-in. Flight delayed? Just show those aircraft mechanics Overhauling Airline Maintenance and they'll have that wing bolted back on in a jiffy.

• Romance. Put down that tacky bodice-ripper and learn about finding the love that dare not speak its name: customer love. Explore the innuendo in From Satisfaction To Loyalty: Building Emotional Bonds Through Next-Generation Service; learn the Lolita-meets-the-Internet secrets of persuasive auto sites; and swoon at the romantic, fairy-tale ending of To Be Or Not To Be Single-Instance ERP: Follow Thy Governance Heart Toward A Consolidated Environment. While you're at it, pitch HELLO! and Us out with the rest of the trash; Brad and Angelina's celebrity peccadilloes have nothing on titillating technology tie-ups like the Oracle-PeopleSoft fusion. Steamy reading, indeed!

• Crime. Why read Grisham's umpteenth book about fake lawyers, juries, and crooks when the live ones are so much better? Read about the real-life legal machinations and IT ramifications of legislation like America's Sarbanes-Oxley or Europe's Basel II. Witness the changing role -- and burden -- of electronic evidence in The Price Of Flawed Electronic Discovery. If you believe the entertainment industry, file-sharing is the heist of the 21st century -- this can also be read as a pirate novel if you're bobbing about on a sailboat in the Caribbean, Baltic, or Mediterranean.

• Science (Fiction?). Like Neal Stephenson? Try our take on the real technologies behind brain-computer interfaces and nanotechnology. If William Gibson's five-minutes-in-the-future sci-fi is more your style, see The Next Wave Of Mobile Devices or our US Online Marketing Forecast: 2005 To 2010. Forrester even trumps the movies: Blockbusters like "Star Wars" are quaint, compared with the battle scenes in Telemetics' Future: The OnStar Empire Strikes Back and Mobile Devices Under Attack.

Research Referenced In This Issue Basel II's Impact Goes Beyond Risk Management (35141) Court Rules Against Grokster, Piracy Goes On (37300) Digital Signage Grows Up (37270) From Satisfaction To Loyalty (36174) GM's Well-Honed Outsourcer Management Practices (37079) How Brands Succeed Online (36670) Identifying The Emotive Consumer (36492) It's Nanotech Soon, But Not Quite Yet (35404) Lost In Translation: Why Business Users And Offshore Outsourcers Can't Communicate (35331) Making Auto Site Content Persuasive (35570) Oracle-PeopleSoft Part 2: Moving Toward Fusion (36630) Organic IT (14136) Overhauling Airline Maintenance (35415) The European Online Consumer (36392) The Forrester Wave™: Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Software, Q1 2005 (35961) The Mobile Mind (34412) The Next Wave Of Mobile Devices (35130) The Price Of Flawed Electronic Discovery (37026) The Quality-Focused Traveler (35567) To Be Or Not To Be Single-Instance ERP (36784) US Online Marketing Forecast: 2005 To 2010 (36546)

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