FACES

Forty-four doggie faces peer out at the reader of this picture book cum text by V. Sackville-West. Laelia Goehr's photographs are personable and varied. V. Sackville-West's text is spirited and, as she says, amateur -- in affection and also the sense of not being professional but from a rather uneven experience with the breeds, which run from basset to samoyed, from the most ancient Borzoi to the untraceable mongrel. Although always in style her comments are perhaps more whimsical than grounded in knowledge -- and fanciers may rise to arms when she misapprehends their favorites. The history is fun -- ""Afghans like to think their dogs are indigenous, and of such antiquity that Noah took a couple onto the Ark"" -- and the total is a slight diversion. Slick paper, not quality, popular price. Libraries need not bother.