MAMA MAKES UP HER MIND AND OTHER...

MAMA MAKES UP HER MIND AND OTHER DANGERS OF SOUTHERN LIVING by Bailey White (Vintage: $10.; 229 pp.). The popular National Public Radio commentator discusses life in rural Georgia in these lively vignettes. Her eccentric, often cantankerous mother, who cooks road-kill animals and assumes command of any social situation, dominates the book. White describes her mother’s house as a sort of beach where the flotsam of several generations has come to rest. When she attempts to clean for a visit from prospective in-laws, “Mama would not let us throw out a box of old photographs we found under the sofa--’I may remember who those people are someday.’ ” Readers who listen to “All Things Considered” will hear White’s familiar drawl as they savor these memoirs of an unusual yet ordinary life.