Recommended Reading for: Lauren Conrad

Oh, Lauren.

I rewatched the second half of Season 2 of The Hills on Sunday (thanks, Comcast On Demand!) in preparation for the Season 3 premiere on Aug 13. It was a delightful, delicious re-immersion experience, let me tell you. Until I noticed something troubling. Often, I saw my dear LoLo curled up on the couch, upset about something Heidi or Douche-bag Extraordinary Spencer Pratt had done. And how did she comfort herself? Not with a good book, as one might expect from such an intelligent young lady. All she ever seemed to be reading was Life & Style or her Blackberry! Tsk. L.C., I know you're better than that. When you aren't updating your website or reading about the interns who threaten to steal your job on the Teen Vogue blog, I'm sure you can be found holed up in your room, tearing through some Proust with an air of utmost contentment.

But just in case you aren't halfway through In Search of Lost Time, here are a few literary recommendations to help you through this difficult period of your life. Please pass in your book report on the title of your choice no later than Wednesday, Aug 15. And stop hanging out with Jason. It's getting pathetic.

1. Emma by Jane Austen: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence, and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

2. White Oleander by Janet Fitch: "Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay."

3. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett: "If someone loves you for what you can do then it’s flattering, but why do they love you? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them."

4. A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry: "Funny thing about sisters. Well, about us anyway; Dad says it's unacademic to generalize. Molly is prettier than I am, but I'm smarter than Molly. I want with my whole being to be something someday; I'd like to think that someday, when I'm grown up, people everywhere will know who I am, because I will have accomplished something important..."

5. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Life was a damned muddle...a football game with every one off-side and the referee gotten rid of--every one claiming the referee would have been on his side."