A SAMPLER -- FROM VENOM TO VENUS TO VICTIM -- FOR THE ECLECTIC GIVER

Author: By Katherine A. Powers

Date: SUNDAY, December 7, 1997

Page: G6

Section: Books

It is, of course, the frightful matter of gift-getting that destroys what should be a jolly time of provisioning and cellaring and absenteeism at work. But that is where books come in: You can knock off your whole list in one shop, if you know what you're doing. The following books strike me as being more than ordinarily suited to being presented to friends and relations.

I am sure I am not the only one who has felt the absence of a popular but comprehensive guide to serpents. This sad state of affairs has finally been put right in the substantial shape of Harry W. Greene's ``Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature'' (University of California Press, $45). This is a work of scientific seriousness written by a man who is alert to where our fascination with snakes really lies: They are anomalous beings with a reputation for deadliness. The photographs in the book are indescribably powerful: I am simply exhilarated with horror, for instance, as I gaze at the demurely amused expression on the face of the Black Mamba. Indeed, Greene admits that his own fascination with venomous snakes (which accounts for their preponderance here) transcends scientific interest. There is no question that morbid attraction dragged me into these pages, but their substance made it difficult to leave them. Greene explores the evolutionary oddness of snakes, their singular anatomy, their various approaches to life and their relations with human beings, engagingly and in great depth. I cannot imagine a person who would not rejoice in this book.

But of course, you're not going to be shelling out $45 for every character who has muscled his way onto your list. The person who wishes to mingle timeliness and thrift will want to know that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Sinclair Lewis's ``Babbitt'': the ideal gift for the business person, and one that may be purchased for $6.95 (New American Library). Not so good from a literary standpoint, but of great historical interest, is ``If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis'' (Southern Illinois University Press, $39.95 hardcover, $19.95 paper). These stories were published between 1915 and 1921 in such places as The Saturday Evening Post. They celebrate the little man in business: the traveling salesman, the bank teller, the small-time go-getter who reads such self-help manuals as ``Punch the Buzzer on Yourself.'' The publisher of this volume of Lewis's little stories hopes to cash in on the rage for Dilbert books and office-worker angst, but I must say that, except in their relentless pursuit of self-improvement, the characters at large in these pages possess habits of mind that are as foreign to our own as those in a medieval monastery. The pleasure I took in reading these stories sprang from the picture they draw of a vanished America.

``Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery'' by Elizabeth Haiken (Johns Hopkins University Press, $24.95) is what its subtitle suggests, as well as a contribution to the history of crucial American ideals: self-esteem, ethnic homogeneity, and the body beautiful. The author shows how the American public broadened its understanding of ``self-improvement'' to include surgical alteration of the body and how its practitioners made this choice respectable. Once condemned as an odious manifestation of vanity, undergoing cosmetic surgery gradually became considered a laudable way of taking charge of one's life. Although this is a scholarly book, it is well written and engrossing to the reader who might take an unscholarly, not to say undignified, interest in the matters it treats.

``The Best American Sports Writing 1997'' (Mariner, $13) is edited this year by George Plimpton and comprises much better-written pieces and bigger literary guns than last year's edition (which was edited by John Feinstein). As usual with this series, ``sports'' is a capacious umbrella including baseball, football, basketball, tennis, and golf, naturally enough, but also bullfighting, arm wrestling, ball-park food concessions, Muhammad Ali's meeting with Fidel Castro, Ian Frazier catching little fish, and Richard Ford hunting with his wife: `` `Shoot it. Shoot it, Kristina!' . . . Shoot! . . . Jesus, shoot it! Shoot, shoot!' '' (Shoot him, Kristina. Please.) Jon Krakauer's original account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, which was published in Outside magazine, is also present, as it should be. This is the greatest piece of sports -- all right, adventure -- writing I have read for many years. Indeed, I recommend the book (Villard, $24.95) as a gift if you can satisfy yourself that your recipient has not already read it.

The hardest literary appetite to cater to is humor. Just one look at the ``humor'' section of any bookstore is enough to depress even the most high-spirited. The truly amusing books are invariably novels, two of which have just been republished in paperback in one volume. ``The Adrian Mole Diaries'' (Avon, $12) consists of Sue Townsend's ``The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4'' and ``The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole.'' These are the journal entries of a more-than-usually tortured adolescent living in England in the early 1980s. He is a victim of his parent's improvidence and inconstancy, of meddling functionaries of the welfare state, of the vicissitudes of love and a continually erupting complexion. But he is a poet and a reader: ``I am very unhappy and have once again turned to great literature for solace. It's no surprise to me that intellectuals commit suicide, go mad or die from drink. We feel things more than other people. We know the world is rotten and that chins are ruined by spots.'' This book is the ideal gift for the sensitive misanthropes on your list, as well as for those who have to live with them at this time of the year.