There's a Country in My Cellar

Not necessarily the best but, rather, approximately 150 of some of the best of Baker's 3800 ``Observer'' columns (totaling nearly three million words) that have appeared in the New York Times since July 16, 1962. They deal mostly with money, nonsense, places, roots, the New Age, events of 1968, television (Baker keeps his set in the cellar), the gourmet revolution and the low state of the mother tongue. A long piece, ``The Becoming Looseness of Doom,'' is adapted from an address to a college graduating class, and a few personal columns reveal ``a somewhat staid, conservative fellow gone a bit long in the tooth and, therefore, starting to believe that it was a better world when he was a youth.'' The essays should be read a few at a time, over weeks or months; although many of them seem as valid today as they did 10, 20 or 30 years ago, several have dated. But the collection will please Baker's devoted fans and may induce others to subscribe to the Times in order to keep up with his latest skeptical sallies. (Oct.)