MCCALL'S BOOK OF ENTERTAINING

Brisk and unoriginal, this covers all occasions, from three-year-old birthdays to formal dinners, with the same rather obvious advice: plan carefully and do as much as possible in advance. Suggestions include when to send out or telephone invitations, how to figure alcohol consumption, where to hire help; some get quite detailed--specific jobs at a beach picnic--but few seem truly inspired. Read and Eckley also include many recipes but, again, too few sound especially appealing and several seem tepid indeed: pesto for six calls for a mere teaspoon of basil--dried--and another features refrigerator rolls with dried onion soup mix and sour cream. Within the genre, although there is the ""get your fish man to poach you some salmon"" tip, it's less uppity (and budget-stretching) than, say, The Bloomingdale's Book of Entertaining (Batterberry and Batterberry, 1976) and offers a wide range of middle-of-the-road menus.