“WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE...

“WHAT DO YOU CARE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK?”

Further Adventures of a Curious Character

by Richard P. Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton (W. W. Norton: $17.95; 255 pp.) A second, gentler volume of memoirs by the Nobel laureate, a self-created eccentric, would-be 20th-Century Leonardo, all-around genius with the added fillip of a sense of humor.--Bettyann Kevles

BINDING SPELL

by Elizabeth Arthur (Doubleday: $17.95; 368 pp.) A whimsical tale set in a small town in Indiana, whose real subject is the comical eccentricity of its entire cast of characters, among whom are found four dogs, each with a point of view.--Richard Eder