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inundated with hundreds of books that show potential but, for lack of time, end up slipping down a storm sewer unread. Here is a handful I‘ve clutched from that fate, and read enough to potentially recommend. (Including one with frightâ€" ening numbers for southpaws). Robert MacNeil has gotten lots of Honorary Canadian media status for his first novel. Burden of Desire (Doubleday $28). MacNeil was coâ€"author of The Story of English with Robert MacCrum. Mainland is the latest novel by MacCrum, but its convoluted tale of love and politics in an unidentified postâ€"colonial country, left me bewildered. MacNeil‘s story is set in his hometown of Halifax just after the 1917 explosion. A young minister finds a sexually explicit diary among some donated clothes and traces it to Julia, whose husband has been ighting in the trenches of France. | recail the terror | felt as a teenager first reading about the Halifax explosion in Hugh MacLennan‘s Barometer Rising. Burden of Desire looks like its worthy successor. Expatriates with new novels include Paulette Jiles. She was born in the Ozarks but moved to Canada in the 1960s to live with a poet draftâ€" dodger. Her own poetry garnered a Governorâ€"Genâ€" eral‘s, and several other, awards. And her Sitting in the Club Car Drinking Rum and Karmaâ€"Kola has become an underground classic. Its American title is A Manual of Etiquette for Ladies Crossing Canada by Train! in Cousins (Random House $30), Jiles returns to her dying mother and decides to track down her longâ€"lost family roots. She hooks up with a Texas cattieman who drives her on a mad search for inâ€"laws and outâ€"laws throughout the Marianne Williamson is a hot item on the talk show circuit with her book A Return to Love (HarperCollins $29.95). in it she outlines her own spiritual journey triggered by A Course in Miracies. midwest. As the cover asks, ‘‘Who am I if they‘re The burdent of being a leftie samniuniteatet )Yb w0 w00 wcane sc go > The April issue of New Age Journal has an interview with her. | was impressed enough to check several chapters of her book. She has gone from being a poor lost anorexic to setting up hospice programs for AIDS patients in New York and Los Angeles. The basic principle of The Course is that we can change how we view and interact with the world from a basis of fear and separation, to one based on love and connectedness. My philosophical skepticism did not emerge unscathed by her writing. I‘m not entirely convinced, but am now curious to tackle The Course in Miracies. Are leftâ€"handed people more skeptical than rightâ€" handers? Differences from creativity to clumsiness are examined in a new book by a UBC professor. Staniey Coren. The Leftâ€"Hander Syndrome (Free Press $29.95) is pretty scary reading for us southpaws. Coren‘s research into mortality rates found that among baseball players (a group whose handedness was recorded) leftâ€"handers definitely live shorter lives. This led him to broader studies with similar results. Fifteen per cent of the populaâ€" tion is leftâ€"handed at age 10, but only one per cent at age 30! All I can say is ‘"how gauche.‘‘ Give me life or give me leftâ€"handedness . . . no really, give me both. Chuck Erion is a leftâ€"handed Waterioo bookseller Ey appear in numerous stage plays including a production of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. He received much critical acciaim in 1985 for his first feature role in To Live And Die in L.A. and his film credits since then include Manâ€" hunter, Amazing Grace And Chuck, Cousins, Long Gone and the TV miniâ€"series The Kennedys M.F., Fort McMurray A. Born and raised in Chicago William Petersen became interâ€" ested in an acting career while attending Idaho State University. Following a year of study in Spain as a Shakespearean Scholar he continues to make his home in Chicago where he is involved with the Remains Theatre, a company he formed with other actors in 1979. Q. Please tell me about Wilâ€" liam Petersen who appeared in Young Guns II and To Live And Die in L.A. What other movies has he been in? Thank you. For information on a favorite personality, write to Eli Witmer, P.O. Box 345, Stn. A, Toronto MSW 1C2. Questions will be answered in this column as space permits. WATERLOO CHRONICLE. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1992 â€" PAGE 17 This Week March 30 to April 4 PLUS BATTLE OF THE SEXES Sat., April 4/92 ROCK! MOUNTAINS 7 2 33 â€" peek at these peaks Show Times: 12:30â€"5:00 9:30â€"12:30 grio42 i6 y oub NH _