Miss Manners' Guide for the Turn-Of-The-Millennium

Martin, aka syndicated columnist ``Miss Manners,'' here covers everything one might need to know about proper behavior, not just for the coming millennium, but in everyday life in the present decade. In a Q & A format interspersed with short essays on manners, mores and her personal peeves, she deals with the gamut of social situations, from AIDS (``receiving an incurable disease because one does not want to risk offending someone with a question seems excessive'') to nude weddings, telephone answering machines (``the modern equivalent of the butler''), the ``spinach-on-the-tooth rule'' (``draw something unfavorable to a person's attention only if it can easily be fixed'') and the correct response to negative literary criticism (``the etiquette obligation in such cases is on the friends and supporters of the wounded author''). Miss Manners's remarkably sane advice and admonitions, written in the third person and addressed to ``Gentle Reader,'' are entertaining as well as practical. (Nov.)