Soon the weather will cool a bit and taking a stroll will be a welcome change from blistering heat or refrigerated air conditioning. And thanks to Lynn Arave and Ray Boren, you can now stroll about the greater Salt Lake Valley and beyond with purpose. Their new book, "Walking Salt Lake City," will entice you to put on your walking shoes and hit the pavement.

Thirty-four different walking tours are featured, from the Dimple Dell area in Sandy, to Lagoon, and even Antelope Island. Each tour has a helpful map at the beginning, as well as boundaries, distance, level of difficulty, and either where to park or how to use public transportation to get there. At the end of each tour is a list of points of interest (which includes great places to get snacks or full meals), a route summary, and even how to connect some of the walks with each other. If you are up to it, additional tours and sites are suggested. And, you can make these walks as long or as short as you choose.

Consider this: an easy quarter mile stroll at the Temple Quarry in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Or how about an easy one mile stroll on the Fielding Garr Ranch on Antelope Island? Ever consider walking the Bonneville Shoreline? That tour is about 3.5 easy miles. Or you could plan a tour of Central City which takes you past the new home of Weller Book Works! (It's in the book folks. Really)

At the end of the book is a list of walks by theme: people watching, arts, architecture, peaceful escapes, serious workouts, and dining/shopping. The key word in these walking tours is minutiae. Walking along, seeing the detail of the area will humor you, enlighten you, and occassionally amaze you. And this guide is the perfect companion. The only thing not included are the comfortable walking shoes!

I'm currently enthralled with an Advance Readers Copy my Penguin Group hardcover sales representative gave me. It took me a while to get to it. To be honest, I just kept skipping it over. Now that I'm in the middle of it, I can't figure out why. It has everything I love: strong sense of place, compelling characters, a slippery sense of time, and beautiful beautiful prose. The book is Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins. There are moments when I've held my breath and rushed through a story to see what happens. Then I go back and read it again. These short stories resonate, reverberate even, in my psyche even after I've closed the book and turned out the light. It also begins with a poem I had forgotten about but that I love. I think you will love this book too. I'm sorry that I won't be able to sell it until August because I'm dying to put it in peoples' hands today. Instead, I'll leave you with the poem that sets the tone for the book.

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, "Is it good, friend?"

"It is bitter -- bitter," he answered;

"But I like it

Because it is bitter,

And because it is my heart."

--Stephen Crane