A lovely big two- person outdoor furniture hammock came from The Original Hammock Shop; it was made of strong cotton cord with indestructible oak stretchers at either end.

We found nature had placed two little hemlock trees in exactly the right spot for our hammock up at Holly Creek, and we spent the greater part of that summer either lolling in that hammock or fighting over who got it next.

In time, burglars stole our hammock and several other treasures, and we had to buy another one. If assailed by nothing worse than weather or scrambling children, a Pawleys Island hammock would last forever. Thieves are a different matter. We have lost more than one to hammock loving larcenists. And I mourn every one - at least I did until the chinaberry tree which supported one end of the last one died.

Now I look around my treesy yard at Sweet Apple and I grieve that no two trees are properly spaced to support a hammock. A store-bought metal stand - and Pawleys Island sells those too - just doesn't seem suitable. You need a leafy canopy overhead. You need cicadas singing above you and the creak of the old tree trunks as you swing gently to and fro.

However, I'm thinking. I have the price list from the original hammock shop, which was started in the late 1800s, and my mind hovers between the large and the deluxe - natural cotton rope made without knots, all handwoven. Talk about poetry! So far this summer I have pampered myself with the idea that a heat- suffering family deserves escape. I have bought electric fans going and coming for my children, grandchildren and myself. They help, but not much.

When the neighbors who spend their evenings lazing on their front stoops in Bernard Malamud's 1956 story A Summer's Reading hear that George Stoyonovich has a summer plan to read 100 library books, they treat the 20-year-old high school drop-out with more respect and kindness than he's ever encountered. But he never goes to the library; he reads nothing but some picture magazines his sister Sophie collects off the tables at the cafeteria where she works. When he thinks he's been found out, George feels enormous shame, and then grace and relief when he realizes his secret is safe. But come fall, he heads to the public library. Determined, George builds a stack of 100 titles and starts reading.

Some selections, but not all, are books by Jewish authors; some only touch on Jewish themes while others have Judaism as their prime focus; most are just-published. For background and fascinating reading, The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth (Viking) by Lena Lencek and Gideon Bokser. It is an illustrated social, geological and cultural history, covering therapeutic as well as pleasure beaches, from St. Tropez to Miami Beach to Coney Island. "After all is said and done, we still come to the beach to slip through a crack of time into the paradise of self-forgetfulness."