As July bounds towards it's hasty conclusion with each passing day passing all the more faster, all that remains is a single month. A single month, before the last, dying lights of summer retreat from the beaches, the forests, the lawns, and the streets. Returning to a sun that recedes ever into the distance, surrounding and shrinking back onto it's source like a flower at the end of its blissful bloom. In its place on the barren ground left behind, are leaves. Leaves, fluttering off, gliding towards fields and walkways, dancing with what little life remains in them they have taken from the branches of lifeless trees. Coloring the ground with deaths so colorful, they have never seemed more alive. Even as feet trample over them.

The feet of students. Drumming against the ground in a steady, routine rhythm the dying leaves and soil beneath them have felt and heard for as long before there was such thing as school. Even as classroom and dorms become packed. As books eagerly fly off shelves in bookstores and libraries into hands where the eagerness that welcomes them maybe eager for something else. Books bearing the dread of organic chemistry and calculus, or the intoxicating eloquence of F. Scott Fitzgerald -- even, as perhaps, a dulled incisiveness of an intoxicated mind begins to comprehend it with eloquence as it tries to escape the sobering onset of regret. Books that for the next eight to twelve months, will become the impetus, the foundation for all that passes, and all that lives. Even as what lives passes all the more faster with the ruffle of each page -- the crinkling of dead leaves. Passing until the light of summer returns. When the leaves are back on the trees. Here are five books to read while the light and leaves remain for a bit longer:

1. "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf

Virgina Woolf's epic "To the Lighthouse" proves to be a beachworthy summer escape.Trevor Mak

Published in 1927, Virginia Woolf's masterpiece chronicles the lives of the Ramsay family when they visit the Isle of Skye on two separate occasions in 1910 and 1920. A survey of British attitudes before and after WWI, the novel delves into themes of loss, subjectivity, and the nature of art. Its pedagogical value aside, Woolf's terse prose sown with a sublime, intimate reclusiveness, transports and entraps her reader in a remote timelessness one can expect to find sitting on the shore of a beach surrounded by water that glimmers with sparkling sunlight dancing upon its surface. The Modern Library hails it at fifteen out of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

2. "The Patrick Melrose Novels" by Edward St. Aubyn

Though inspired by a troubling legacy, "The Patrick Melrose" is a true deluge of overwhelming emotion.Trevor Mak

A series of five books republished in a single volume in 2012, this semi autobiographical recounts the trauma of emotional and sexual abuse the author endured the hands of his father, and subsequent struggle with heroine. Despite the story's morally decadent and dense content, Edward St. Aubyn's wit enhanced by dark humor coupled with, and contrasted with periods of seering conviction makes this collection a pathos of cathartic proportions. This books was also adapted into a miniseries which aired on Showtime back on May 12. The much praised and beloved Benedict Cumberbatch portrays the story's embattled protagonist, Patrick Melrose.

3. "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison

"Invisible Man" bodes as a true adventure for those eager to explore New York at the height of the Harlem Renaissance.Trevor Mak

Published in 1952, "Invisible Man" is often credited for setting off a resurgence of African-American Literature in the United States, inspiring future greats such as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. A story that gallivants from Jim Crow dominated Alabama to the packed streets of New York in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, it explores themes of black identity, black nationalism, individuality, and personal identity wile proving to be as adventurous as the jazz packed prose lining its pages. Winning a National Book Award a year after its publication, it is ranked 19th by the Modern Library on it's list of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, just four spots shy of Virginia Woolf's aforementioned "To the Lighthouse".

4. "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison

Though a deeply disturbing tale, the subtle, but sweeping deliverance of its narrative is what allows "The Bluest Eye" to remain an awe inspiring read.Trevor Mak

Making its way into circulation in 1970 as Toni Morrison's debut novel, "The Bluest Eye" took the literary world by storm with its scathing, deeply troubling portrait chronicling the struggles of an African-American family during the years following the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio. Highly controversial due to the novel's examination of themes that include racism, incest, and child molestation, the difficulty of it's subject matter is compensated for the unparalleled poetic command of narrative on the part of Morrison. Enshrouding her story with a voice echoing a lullaby fraught with tortured despair, but with the most tender of any compassion there is to give, "The Bluest Eye" establishes itself as a tale for the ages. One that is moving to an endless line of tears even as it remains disturbing in the darkest corner of the most beautiful nightmare.

5. "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner

Written without changing a single word, "As I Lay Dying" proved to be the tour de force William Faulkner had envisioned it to be.Trevor Mak

A literary magnum opus, even today, William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" recounts the tragic dissolution of the Bundren family as they embark on their tragic odyssey to Jefferson. Fraught with dark humor, the book is extraordinarily scenic despite its ominous projection as Faulkner mythologizes the American South in a way that hasn't been seen since Mark Twain. However, what makes this books a true feast of words is the stream of consciousness the author employs to capture the inner monologue of his characters. Able to depict into words, style, and form, the psychological process and its ability to effect each persons as they offer their perspective. A novel that helped shaped the Southern Renaissance movement in literature, it consistently ranks as one of finest novels to take form in the 20th century, and is a true force to behold. An epic told like no epic has been told before.

Though much of these books are burdened with great sadness, there to are moments of laughter, of joy. Sadness and joy that passes like the leaves and light of summer. Passes like the seasons until there will come to pass a time where the leaves will linger upon the trees again. Before they must color the ground again.