Words for the dog days of summer

Mario here:

You'd think that with all the free time we writers have--breakfast in bed, three martini lunches, afternoons at the spa, working on our tans, evening cocktails, the occasional public brawl--we'd have plenty of time to read.  Especially during the summer.  But no.  We have to carve our spare minutes out of the clock.  Each of us has a TBR stack tall enough to kill if it toppled over at the wrong moment.  
This last month I played a little hooky from my deadlines to attack that pile...