1981

I'm on vacation. I'm aboard a sailboat off the banks of Wooden Boat, where the Wooden Boat School is located, near Brooklin, Maine. Asleep in the forward cabin are Scott Gazelle, his wife, Ayça, and son Orhan. This is an annual event for us, now in our seventh summer together. And other than eating, drinking, reading, relaxing and, of course, sailing, I do some writing. Working on my novel. Now in its fourth summer of production. It's going to be a good one, if I ever manage to finish it. Before fiction becomes fact, that is.

On the other hand, Julie Wallin Kaewart has taken the step to make her fiction fact with a series of "Un"-books (Bantam Books), bearing the subscript, 'A Booklover's Mystery." And indeed, the books revolve around the character of Alex Plumtree of the English Plumtree Publishers. I felt compelled to at least read one of the books, if I was going to comment in this column, and so I bought the first, Unbound. Well, let me tell you, I don't know where Julie learned all of those big words, but it wasn't in my English 5 class. The girl from Omaha has managed to capture the vocabulary and grammar of a proper Englishman in narrating the details of a book-loving world and the mysteries that can arise within it. I won't tell you everything about the book, but I will say the butler didn't do it.

Another author in our midst is Nick Carr, who has edited The Digital Enterprise (Harvard Business School Press), a collection of articles from the Harvard Business Review, which discuss how "digital technologies are reshaping the very infrastructure of business." While Nick's book didn't really offer the sort of light reading I was looking for on my vacation, it does provide a wealth of insight for those managers looking to take advantage of opportunities in the digital age.

Ann Smolowe co-authored Adventure in Business An I.M.M.E.R.S.I.O.N.Approach to Training andConsulting (Pearson Custom Publishing) along with her sister. The book "examines basic assumptions about the use of adventure activities in the world of corporate training. It strives to balance theory and methods with dozens of practical examples from over 20 years of Adventure training in the corporate world." For Ann, "it was the culmination of 15 years in the Adventure training industry before leaving it" to sell payment software. Ann, I think we've seen some of your former clients hanging from ropes on Hurricane Island!

Authoring on a different front is Pam Mason Wagner, whom I've mentioned previously. A bit of follow-up. Rather than writing for print me- dia, she continues in the filmmaking business, currently working sit Science Times, produced by New York Times Television, airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel. Sto- ries that she's done so far include one about a woman tree canopy biologist and a story about cannibalism among the Anasazi Indians. Currently she's working on a piece about what was eaten at King Midas's funerary feast. Tasty! I mentioned noticing that Pam had produced a show about Lucille Ball in my April column. Turns out, she and husband Thom have been nominated for a primetime Emmy for the documentary. We'll keep our fingers crossed, Pam.

Not wishing to walk the plank, ships captain Scott has authored several books, including Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Radiology: Imagingand Intervention. Unsure of the title, his wife called it "everything you always wanted to know about liverx-rays but were afraid to ask." I'll have to save that for my next summer's reading list.

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