From the lazy, relaxed days of summer to vacations with long commutes, nothing passes the time quite like a satisfying book. Here are reviews of three new ones - fashion-related, of course - that you might want to check out.

"How to Be a Budget Fashionista" by Kathryn Finney (Ballantine Books, $12.95.)

As the fascination with fashion hits new highs, so do the numbers of fashionistas determined to look super-stylish without paying designer prices. These days, it's all about getting the look for less.

To help women, who, like her, insist on looking fabulous without shelling out big bucks or piling up debt, Finney has written this how-to manual.

It's the next logical step behind her founding of TheBudgetFashionista.com in 2003, and it's full of tips on how to dress to kill while handling your funds responsibly.

"I'm not rich. I'm not a size two. I'm not even from New York," wrote the woman who has christened herself "the patron saint of budget shopping."

"I'm just a brilliantly normal person who was lured into the evils of credit card debt by an obsession with handbags and designer shoes.

"Walking the edge of bankruptcy (and marrying someone cheap) helped me change my dangerous shopping ways and get out of debt the old-fashioned way: one payment at a time," she continued. "But I loved fashion, especially shoes. I knew there had to be a way to be fiscally responsible and stylish at the same time. Like a Chanel-clad phoenix rising from the ashes of financial stupidity, this book emerged."

Inside is some pretty savvy advice, including lots of lists and charts on budgeting, saving, investing, shopping, beauty, Internet resources, organizing closets and fund-raising for forays into fashion-buying - all relevant to the needs and desires of shop-happy style mavens.

"Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown" by Adena Halpern (Gotham Books, $25.)

Often hilarious and always poignant, this is a good biography presented as a collection of essays. Halpern is thoroughly engaging, obviously having benefited from studying dramatic writing at New York University and screenwriting at the American Film Institute (bachelor's and master's of fine arts degrees, respectively.)

Hers is not an unfamiliar voice. She writes a monthly column for Marie Claire magazine and also has written for Daily Variety and The New York Times.

What Halpern reveals in the book, subtitled "Notes from a Single Girl's Closet," is the truth that fashion for many men and especially women is intricately intertwined with experiences and memories. And for those for whom fashion is a major concern, any reflection on life would be woefully incomplete without an analysis of fashion's impact on the person.

Halpern writes, "These stories are for everyone who keeps an old piece of clothing in the back of the closet, wishing that one day those clothes would get up and start talking about the cherished moments they once shared together."

"The Bikini Book" edited by Kelly Killoren Bensimon (Assouline, $29.95); this coffee-table keeper, edited by the editor-in-chief of ELLE Accessories magazine, was published to celebrate the 60th anniversary this year of the bikini, the two-piece outfit that has been called the most revolutionary look in the history of fashion. Published in conjunction with LYCRA, the book is a virtual pictorial history of the bikini. There are Hollywood icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, contemporary celebs such as Halle Berry and Naomi Campbell and plenty of ordinary people - all in bikinis.

There's also a chapter on the male bikini, a list of the 10 most famous bikinis in history, pictures of swimsuit "icons" from Sports Illustrated's annual issue, modern bikini trends, interesting quotations about bikinis and short interviews.

All in all, an informative and provocative work.