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If there's anything we enjoy more than the misfortunes of others, it's our own misfortunes, once we look back on them from a comfortable distance.

This collection of essays, edited by the long-suffering and lucky-to-be-alive travel writer Tim Cahill, is just one laugh after another. Glad we weren't there, but enjoying Not so Funny when it Happened [buy at amazon] . by Tim Cahill (editor).

Thinking, learning, emotions, memory. That good old brain, it's an old song and one that just keeps on kicking. Richard Restak wrote his first three books on the brain using a pen and paper, but switched to using a computer some books ago.

'New Brain' is not that easy to evaluate. Written in a quasi-anecdotal style, it covers a lot of ground, just touching on a lot of important topics. You might not learn that much from this book, but it will certainly give you a lot to think about. For example:

Violence in the movies. Restak comes down hard against violent images, even depictions that are clearly fiction. I've seen a lot of violent movie images in my day, yet over time became increasingly uncomfortable with them. Restak backs up my intuitive reaction fairly unambiguously. Movie violence bad.

Learning. Good news, gang. Brain plasticity (that's a good thing) continues on year after year. You might not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but an old human? That's another story. Choose your skill and practice practice practice. Carnegie Hall is just across the street.

Memory. Would you really want a perfect memory of everything? Maybe not. Maybe it's better to forget a lot of the trivial stuff. The reason why it's an intriguing question now and in the coming decade can be found in the pages of this book: memory-improving medicines, if 'medicine' is even an appropriate term, are about to appear upon the scene.

And what about emotions? No one wants to be depressed, but is it okay to be shy and retiring? How about a little negative? How about QUITE negative, along the lines of Schopenhauer. A fuller understanding of brain chemistry will inevitably lead to (has led to) ways to change it.

Here's another intriguing thought. According to Restak, some researchers in the psychological community are starting to think of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) not in terms of a disease, so much as an adaptive cognitive style. You know, 'that's just the way things are for some people.' In the media culture, are people's brains rewiring themselves to account for sitting in front of one type of screen or another? Restak makes a pretty good case for it, but mainly he's giving you food for thought.

And a fine feed it is. Tie on your feedback for a provoking (of thought) meal of New Brain [buy at amazon] . by Richard Restak. If you haven't been following brain science over the past ten years (and I haven't) it's well worth reading. If you're a brain scientist yourself, you won't be reading this book and in fact will probably find much to annoy. Let me know! If you have a serious interest in the brain, you ought to check out my old pal Lloyd's brain website. This book isn't listed there.

Sometimes a book is difficult even when it's fun. Certainly this is true of Al Franken's (mostly) fun new expose, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A fair and balanced look at the Right."

The book wasn't difficult because the reading was particularly challenging; the pain came from sharing Al's difficult experiences. When you're a witness to the nation's political life, and you read accounts in the media of events that you have experienced, it's natural for a little schizophrenia to surface in the psyche of a normal person. This is something we all experienced back in the forgotten sixties. But what if you're a comedian? Maybe a touch of schizoidness is the only way to stay sane under the circumstances.

Lies and the Lying Liars who tell them [buy at amazon] , a satire by Al Franken, has been in the news because of a trademark lawsuit brought by Fox News's on behalf of their trademarked phrase 'fair and balanced.'

The book answers the question of why Fox's lawsuit wasn't for libel. Here's a hint: a standard defense against a libel: "the truth of the libel asserted."

Today I'm back from vacation, at least as far as the New York Times is concerned. Back in March or April, reluctant to cancel the paper, I laid on a pretty long vacation hold.

The other book I read over the weekend-before-last was Dan Brown's fast paced piece of adventure frivolity, Deception Point [buy at amazon] . The funniest scene in the whole book occurs when the book's heroine, in the company of three eminent scientists, is attacked by a rogue Army Delta Force team. One of the scientists is killed, but she escapes with the other two by opening a parachute attached to their dogsled, and they are blown by an 80-knot arctic wind (they're up on the polar ice cap for a big NASA news conference about a life-bearing meteorite that turns out to have faked extraterrestrial fossils on it; but I digress), and the wind blows them a couple of miles across the icepack, and then off onto an ice floe, which the Delta Force team detaches with bazookas or something, and then leaves them for dead. Big mistake.

Bear with me, I haven't gotten to the funny part yet, but please feel free to laugh at any time.

Naturally it's pretty cold, and they would die in about six minutes if they weren't all wearing some kind of super-arctic survival wetsuit, so even if they fall into the water they might be okay for an hour or so.

Chances of rescue seem slim, if not actually nonexistent. But the resourceful heroine, an government employee of an agency whose initials form an acronym that stands for Never Say Anything, has one last idea. Even if they are about to die, she will alert her employer as to their location, and they will find the evidence of wrongdoing which she has stuffed in the pocket of her super-artic survival wetsuit. They have super-secret listening devices all over the floor of the Arctic Ocean which just about no one know about, but fortunately she knows about the super-secret listening devices.

She grabs an oar and starts tapping out S-O-S on the surface of the ice flow. And -- this is the best part of the whole book -- a U.S. nuclear sub clandestinely parked nearby hears the SOS, surfaces, picks the three of them up and, because she works for you-know-who, it turns out the captain of the sub even knows her.

How cool is that?

I'll let you know later on today if the NY Times actually appeared this a.m.

High on a hillside in Monterey Park, with a view toward every point of Los Angeles' diverse compass, is a meticulous garden in a public park. You can visit the Sequoia Park garden just by following signs from Atlantic Avenue. It's a detour well worth the trouble. Yet even there, in the ninety-degree heat well above the ozone, a homeless man was shifting in his sleeping bag, ensconced in the middle of this well-taken-care-of hilltop neighborhood.

Cruising back down the hill, we happened upon a vast street fair. Highway Patrol officers keeping a careful vigil from the freeway above the fair made us look twice. A handmade sign said "Thanks, Gray Davis," in gratitude for his signature on a bill giving everyone who lives in California a chance at getting a California drivers' license, whether they're a citizen or not. (You still need to pass the written and driving tests and, of course, pay the fees.)

Of course, Governor Davis was at this celebration.

One of the things I have learned from a history of the Ford Motor Company, Wheels for the World [buy at amazon] . Douglas Brinkley, is that Henry Ford had one of the first drivers' licenses in existence.

In Henry Ford's case, though, the purpose of the drivers's license was not to ensure the safety of the pedestrians of Detroit. Instead it was issued to give legitimacy to his driving activities, and prevent his arrest in Detroit while he was driving around, a mode of transportation which at the time was, of course, relatively unusual.

One of the books I read over the weekend was a murder mystery set in Shakespeare's England. In fact, the story was told from the point of view of Will Shakespeare's roommate. Much Ado About Murder takes place in and around London, before the time of the Globe Theatre. Shakespeare hasn't written any plays yet, just revised some plays for his company, The Queens Players. The theatres are all closed because of the plague.

This was definitely a funny one, with good descriptions of the day-to-day life of players and the theatre.

And because Shakespeare's involved, there's some great persiflage and badinage. His roommate, one Tuck Smythe, is a blacksmith and knife maker who has left home in order to be a player in London and although not the best of actors, he is, as it turns out, quite a good storyteller.

The action takes place in one of three places 1) a pub 2) the theatre during rehearsal 3) Will and Tuck's rooms 4) another pub 5) the streets of London 6) the blacksmith shop where Tuck works. 7) another place I can't mention or I'd give away too much of the plot of this book, which I highly recommend 8) the house of a wealthy man. Well, I guess that's more than three places, isn't it?

Always appealing in a mystery, Simon Hawke has his characters think. They try to puzzle out the motives of other characters, and they reconstruct what must have happened during a crime. Shakespeare is, as you might expect, a pretty savvy guy and a funny, funny man. I enjoyed this book and would have no hesitation at all in seeking out the other books in the series.

There are three books called Much Ado about Murder [buy at amazon] , so be sure you get the one by Simon Hawke.