There's been no luck in finding books to give as gifts for summer reading. From the library came Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane, a best-seller in which it was evident fairly soon exactly what had happened and what would happen. Not only that, it was one of those chest-thumping, "see, I'm a guy, and I sure understand tough neighborhoods and tough people." Sure. Next, again from the library, was Ella in Bloom, for the ladies, by Shelby Hearon. This was a Knopf production and physically a fine book: pages with deckle edges, for example. But the copy-editing was disappointingly bad, and the mere invocation of Pflugerville and Austin is not sufficient to conjure up the atmosphere intended to be invoked. The search continues.