Long days, beach weekends - summer's here, which means there's plenty of time to catch up on some reading. W asked four of our favorite bookstores for their best sellers and top picks on what to peruse between now and Labor Day.

Sarah McNally buys books based on instinct and experience, and so far her track record has been pretty good: her McNally Jackson bookstore, in New York's NoLiTa, carries more than 7,000 literature titles, including many by foreign authors that bibliophiles dream about. Throw in a killer magazine section and an ever-expanding assortment of art and architecture books and it's clear why business has stayed strong during the recession. "I think we're about two or three months away from being perfect, in fact," McNally says. Here's a look at some of her top reads. The thing we've been selling like crazy is New Directions Publishing's repackaged versions of "Miss Lonelyhearts" and "The Day of the Locust" by Nathanael West. Both of them are just off-the-chain magnificent. Hilary Thayer Hamann's "Anthropology of an American Girl" (Random House) is really good. And there's a new nonfiction book, "Welcome to Utopia" (Spiegel & Grau) by Karen Valby, which has got an Augusten Burroughs quote on the cover that may be the best blurb I've ever read. The book is a portrait of this dying community in Texas.

Heavy-hitters from the arenas of art, design, music and film joined forces on Saturday for VICE and Intel's first-ever Creators Project, an initiative to bring together and inspire those working artistically with technology. Held on all eight floors of Milk Studios, the ambitious day-long event featured an interactive array of installations, workshops, screenings and, finally, much-hyped musical performances—including a bombastic set from surprise guest, M.I.A.

The project was no-doubt a success, drawing close to 3,500 stylish attendees, and will now continue on to London, São Paulo, Seoul and Beijing. Here, some of our favorite moments from the the day, captured by photographer Christos Katsiaouni:

Shane Smith, co-founder of VICE

Left, featured artist Hojun Song

The audience at Milk Studios

Far left, Becka Diamond

Josh Hartnett (far right) and friends

From left: featured creator and Yeah Yeah Yeah's guitarist Nick Zinner; featured creator Alan Palomo of Neon Indian

Kirsten Dunst and Waris Ahluwalia

Featured creators Die Antwoord perform onstage

All photos: Christos Katsiaouni

Long days, beach weekends – summer’s here, which means there’s plenty of time to catch up on some reading. W asked four of our favorite bookstores for their best sellers and top picks on what to peruse between now and Labor Day.

Being on an island, it turns out, can be good for business. “The major chain bookstores will not invade, because they would not stay open all year round,” says Dailis Merrill, buyer at Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Martha’s Vineyard. Not surprisingly, the store boasts a solid selection of local books along with titles from the standard publishing houses. Here are some of Merrill’s top picks.

“Schooner” (Vineyard Stories), which is about the refurbishing of a vessel at the local boatyard. Justin Cronin’s “The Passage” (Ballantine Books) should be a hit, and another release of note is Per Petterson’s “I Curse the River of Time” (Gray Wolf Press). There is a cookbook called “Fast, Fresh & Green” (Chronicle Books) by Susie Middleton, which has a local tie. We’ve just had an author event and expect to sell hundreds of copies this summer. And thanks to Oprah we’ve had a sudden run on “Women Food and God” (Simon & Schuster) by Geneen Roth.

Long days, beach weekends – summer’s here, which means there’s plenty of time to catch up on some reading. W asked four of our favorite bookstores for their best sellers and top picks on what to peruse between now and Labor Day.

Book Soup may be the only spot on the Sunset Strip where agency bigs and struggling actors actually inhabit the same space, at the same time, for more than a few seconds. The reason: the bookstore’s eclectic mix of titles and speakers, who range from Ed Ruscha to RuPaul. “Our bookstore is not, like, whatever sells on The New York Times best-seller list,” says buyer Tosh Berman. “Our store is almost an alternative universe to a lot of other book stores.” Berman gave us a peek inside.

“Just Kids” (Ecco) by Patti Smith is doing incredibly well here. For our clientele it’s a classic book. Another great book is “Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris” (W.W. Norton & Company), by Graham Robb, which describes key moments in Paris’s history, from Napoleon to Sarkozy. Another book is “Dennis Hopper and the New Hollywood” (Flammarion), which is basically about Hopper’s taste. It’s a really nice catalogue of his world. “A Splendid Conspiracy” (New Directions Publishing) by Albert Cossery is fascinating. It’s about three Egyptian characters who have a slightly erotic adventure in Cairo.

This morning in Paris, attendees of Viktor & Rolf’s men’s Spring/Summer 2011 show got a real treat: a live, semi-unplugged performance by La Roux, the English synth-pop band whose frontwoman, Elly Jackson, melds the ginger-hued vulnerability of Molly Ringwald with androgynous New Wave styling. “We asked her to come with just a keyboard,” says Viktor Horsting, half of the design duo, “as we want our men’s shows to be very intimate.”

Jackson performed her hit “Bulletproof” in a look from Viktor & Rolf’s ‘Monsieur’ line that was made-to-measure for the pop star: a blue silk jacket with a pearl print shirt and black tuxedo pants. “We love her authenticity,” says Rolf Snoeren. “In a world of fabricated stars, it’s refreshing to hear and see someone so unique. She dresses in a masculine way, and she deliberately undermines expectations by doing so, which is why we thought it would be cool to dress her in our men’s clothes.” Adds Horsting, “We asked her to wear high heels under her suit, but she refused. We love that.”

We cannot gush enough about Alan Cumming’s cabaret show, which he’s now performing at Feinstein’s at the Regency in New York. (Shows run through Saturday—see here for schedule and booking) It’s a rare treat to see the hilarious and oft-naughty Scot (who can also be quite sincere and touching!) perform above 14th Street. Here, to whet your appetite, is an original number he performs called “I Want To See You.” A heartfelt warning about the evils of too much plastic surgery, it was a particularly entertaining number to watch in the company of New York’s suspiciously taut Upper East Siders—a contradiction that did not go unremarked upon by Cumming at Wednesday’s performance.

Click here to listen to "I Want To See You"

We've been seeing a lot of gorgeous hard-edged, almost lethal looking jewelry these days from lines like Eddie Borgo, Lady Grey, Fenton/Fallon and Pamela Love. Bijules NYC, designed by Jules Kim, is a favorite of Rihanna, Beyonce and Fergie, and definitely falls into this category. Kim's inspirations are never obvious, and this time is no exception. Recently, she says, she's been inspired by Tycho Brahe, a 14th century Danish astronomer and alchemist. After the nobleman lost part of his face in a duel, he became known for wearing a gold nose. "He literally accentuated what he didn't have in a creative way," says Kim. The designer, who's previously created diamond-encrusted nail rings, teeth-shaped necklace charms and golden ear caps, has continued in this vein with her new Bijules Haute collection.

Her new "gold finger" (above), which comes in 14k rose, white or yellow gold ($11,000), is a reptilian-looking, articulated ring in three parts. The tip brandishes an iconic Bijules Nail.

For the even more daring, she's also created 24k "contact lenses" (above) that are sold as a pair. Jules says she likes to call them the "Golden Eye experience." The pair -- wear it swimming at your own risk -- costs $6,000.

It's worth noting that Kim doesn't even limit herself to jewelry. Last year, she presented a gold-plated lingerie collection that Lorenzo Martone (aka Mr. Marc Jacobs) fell for. Martone and Kim are now collaborating on an forthcoming luxury swimsuit line, called Nycked. It launches in January.

Knight and Day, the big Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz action comedy opening tomorrow, is turning out to be one of those movies the critics are either loving (Ty Burr) or evicerating (A.O. Scott). The film's slightly screwball spin, acknowledges its director, James Mangold, hasn't worked for everyone. "There's people who dig the tone and people who don't," he told us when we caught up with him in New York yesterday. "We tried to do things a little less aggressively, and also with a sense of humor." Mangold's resume includes movies as disparate as Walk the Line, Girl, Interrupted, Cop Land and 3:10 to Yuma, and the director says he's never been interested in branding himself with one genre. "I love all kinds of film," he says. "And, frankly, it's liberating." There's definitely more to the director than meets the eye, and that goes for his upbringing. Mangold, as it turns out, is the son of minimalist painter Robert Mangold. This opened up a lot of questions for us.

How did your parents influence what you wanted to do with your life?
Well, having both your parents be painters it makes you really want to be in the arts, and do something creative. But it also makes you want to rebel. For me, that meant not wanting to do something so solitary. For me the challenge of working with a larger group of people, that was what was exciting.

What was it like growing up in middle of the 60s New York art scene?
We lived on the Lower East Side until I was about 8. I went to a lot of openings, I hung out all the time with Robert Ryman's kids... it was a whole world.

From left: James Mangold with his parents in 1965; Robert Mangold's Irregular Gray Area With a Drawn Ellipse, 1986

And your dad was friends with Sol LeWitt, right?
Oh, yes, he was one of my dad's best friends. I went to a lot of Jets games with Sol and my dad.

Do you collect art? Are you interested in art?
Sure, I love art. And of course, I have my parents' work in my home! And Sol's and.... but I'm not at the point now where I can really collect.

Later on, you guys moved out of the city?
Yeah, we lived in a town called Washingtonville that's home to a lot of cops and firemen from New York City. Nobody there got what my parents did. My parents have a very, very rewarding life and do beautiful work, but growing up, one of my critiques of my parents' world was that it was elitist, that it only speaks to a small sliver of the world. Doing something that could reach everybody else was very driving to me.

On the set of Knight and Day

What was the first film you ever made?
When I was 15, I made a sci-fi film with my dad's Super 8 camera, called Space Cabbie. I built this cab-spaceship in our barn, and my dad let me build it out of some old paintings that he didn't think were good enough. I painted over them and glued little plastic buttons on them. Later, I joked for years that it was probably my most expensive film.

Do your parents see your films?
Of course! They came on set when we were shooting in Boston. My dad's a real movie buff so he loves it.

Diaz and Cruise in Knight and Day

Photos: Mangold family: John Sherman. Painting: Courtesy Pace Gallery.

Tilda Swinton has worn the same fragrance -- Penhaligon's Blue Bell -- for 25 years, so it took something really special to get her to branch out. The actress, who's currently tearing up the art-house film circuit in her ravishing film I am Love, has just helped create a scent with venerable French fragrance house Etat Libre d'Orange. Like This, Tilda Swinton, as the fragrance is called, was created to echo the actress's favorite scents of home. As you might expect, it's not a classically pretty or crowd-pleasing concoction. Among the notes are ginger, carrots, dirt and, oh yes, dog paws.

How did Like This come to be?
I'm not a big fragrance consumer or anything but when my friends at Etat Libre d'Orange said that they wanted to make something that would be really personal for me, I said yes. I thought about how wonderful it would be to make some kind of magic elixir that, everywhere you went, would make you feel safe and feel like home.
 
So what's in it?
We thought about the smells in my house, my garden and land. We started with the idea of ginger, partly because I am a natural ginger [points to her hair], I love the taste of it, and I felt very ginger for this adventure. Also pumpkin, carrots--last year I managed to grow baby carrots for the first time.
 
Do I smell dirt?
Yes, there's dirt, vetiver, which is that greenhouse smell. There's also bread, and at one point I remember asking, "Would it be possible to get a dog's paw in there?" And so they did dogs' paws.

And would you ever want to do this again?
I'd love to play with it. I don't need to do it again, but it is a whole new world, no question. They opened me to the possibility of creating the scent of snow! Who knew!

Last night, Tribeca's Dash Gallery opened their doors for art enthusiasts and cyclists alike for "Joy Ride," a group show organized around the theme of, you guessed it, bicycles. The exhibition includes work by Tom Sachs, Agathe Snow and Spike Jonze alongside many emerging artists, and kicks off the Bicycle Film Festival (now in its 10th year).
The film festival (at Anthology Film Archives in New York through this weekend) is traveling to more than 40 cities worldwide. See the festival website for details.