Earlier this week, ABC launched the Lost Book Club, which allows you to while away the summer months between seasons (and also the fall months, and a few winter months, because Lost doesn’t come back until January 2009). The purpose of the Book Club is to really deepen your connection to “the gang” (That’s what we call them now, the gang. Lost is a cartoon for tweens, right?) by exploring any book that was ever shown laying on Ben’s coffee table, or burning in the twisted steel wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815, and also books that just happened to be lying on the floor of the bathroom next to the writers’ room. The thing is, Lost is such a wandering brain fart of loose ends and impossible mysteries that I don’t really think On The Road is going to give you any insight into how the island disappeared or why no one needs those magical injections anymore. Unless, of course, season 5 is all about a cross-country journey of self as Sawyer trips the light jazztastic.

There are some books on the list that seem like obvious Lost-head (That’s what people who love Lost are called, because my neologisms are unclever and pedestrian) material, for example A Brief History of Time (time travel!), Lord of the Flies (islands!), and Slaughterhouse 5 (absurdity!), but my favorites are titles like Afro-Asian World: A Cultural Understanding (take it easy, Lost), and Stephen King’s Carrie (lol, Lost).

The creators of this list have also split the books up into three groupings based on how they influenced the show. These include “Show Theme,” “Dialogue,” and “Background.” Which is useful, because I really didn’t understand why Memoirs of a Geisha was on the list, but then I saw it was filed under “Dialogue,” and I was like “Oh, so that’s why Sun and Jin always talk like they’re in a book about Asian culture written by a white guy.” Lost, more like Racost!

Anyway, now you can prove to all your friends that you’re not a nerd who’s crazy obsessed with a paranormal show about time travel on a sci-fi island by reading a bunch of books. Problem solved.