This time of year, I usually make suggestions for summer reading. But with books coming at me in so many formats — I've just finished an audio book, am currently reading a conventional printed book, and am gearing up for an electronic book — I offer variations on a theme.

Bear with me.

Stories first come to us as sound — words carried by a familiar human voice. Storytelling, an important element in every culture, is as old as time. Audio books stir up those ancient memories. They respond to mankind's eternal request, "Tell me a story."

I've listened to books on tape, compact discs and portable digital media players. For me, audio books are a travel necessity. They help pass time on long car trips. They are salvation in airports, in that they block out the steady din of one-sided cell phone conversations, flight announcements and reminders that the current threat level is orange.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" kept me entertained during recent travels from Houston to Chicago and back. The audio version (unabridged and narrated by actor Tim Robbins) also carried data about the business of that book. Fitzgerald's letters to his editor, agent and friends, including Willa Cather, H.L. Mencken, Maxwell Perkins and Gertrude Stein, served as a marvelous post script.

When I'm not traveling, audio books fail me. Sitting at home, listening to a book, I don't know where to look or what to do with my hands. Conventional printed books solve that problem. And with printed books, I can re-read those passages where words make magic.

Electronic books also offer something to look at, something to hold and the ability to re-read. As an added bonus, they make excellent travel companions. Packing a handful of books in a player smaller than a deck of cards lightens a literary load.

My first electronic book is Jonathan Rabb's "Rosa: A Novel," a political thriller set in Berlin in the last days of World War I. The title's "Rosa" is Rosa Luxemburg, socialist writer and revolutionary, killed during a workers' revolt against the government ... or so we've been led to believe ...

Rabb's novel promises to be a "page-turner." And my interest in Germany between World Wars I and II — its visual arts, its theater — is palpable. But "Rosa" has been put on hold, while I feed my need for non-fiction and read a conventional book.

"Three Cups of Tea," co-authored by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, was recommended by my father-in-law. That man has led me to fine literary humor, well-crafted mysteries and excellent non-fiction. When it comes to books, he knows what I like.

I'm only 100 pages into the book, but I know it follows the story of Mortenson, a mountaineer who, after a failed attempt to climb K2, wound up in an impoverished Pakistan village in the Karakoram Mountains.

Moved by the kindness of the villagers, Mortenson promises to return and build a school for the children. As of the book's publication date, he has built 55 schools in that remote and dangerous region — the land of the Taliban. Talk about a "page-turner."

"Three Cups of Tea" is described as "uplifting." Consider how the book got its title. Korphe village chief Haji Ali explains, "Here we drink three cups of tea to do business: the first you are a stranger, the second you are a friend, and the third you join our family, and for our family we are prepared to do anything — even die."

There you have it. Listening, turning pages, tapping touch screens — book options abound. What a great time to be alive. Happy summer reading.