Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, by...

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Dreamgirl: My Life as a Supreme, by Mary Wilson (St. Martin`s, $4.95), and Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound, by Nelson George (St. Martin`s, $9.95). Wilson, one of the original Supremes, hit the hardcover bestseller list with this autobiography, which is also a story of how Diana Ross abandoned the group in search of the solo career that made her a major star. Wilson`s attitude can be gauged by her insistence on calling Ross ''Diane''-refusing to use Diana, the name Ross adopted as ''just one more step away from us, one more way of setting her apart.'' Disingenuously, it would seem, Wilson says she was not ''keeping a scorecard on who was doing what to whom'' as Motown mogul Berry Gordy became Ross`s sponsor and lover, but the book is indeed a scorecard in a game of clashing ambitions, such as one is used to reading in fictional show-business potboilers. Nelson George`s story of Motown, though he says it is not definitive, is a lively and thoughtful history of the rise and decline of what, for a decade, was the most prosperous black business organization in America. Unfortunately, Gordy, who refused to be interviewed, remains an enigma. Where the two books converge, their stories are not markedly different, except in tone.

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The Story of English, by Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil

(Penguin, $12.95). Unlike too many tomes on the evolution, psychology, sociology, political impact and ''proper'' usage of English, this book is written in lucid, lively prose. Published as a companion to the PBS television series of the same title, the hardcover was praised by no less than the editor-in-chief of the Oxford English Dictionary and became a national best-seller. The book takes readers not only to the past but also across the seas and into space, from Anglo-Saxon England to the American South and into the black ghetto of Philadelphia. The journey is invariably swift and fascinating and not without drama, as the authors explore the controversies of language-should black English and bilingual education be encouraged?-and the languages of controversy-what is vulgar; what is obscene; and what is the difference?

Saratoga Snapper, by Stephen Dobyns (Penguin, $3.95). Dobyns, who teaches creative writing at Syracuse University, practices what, presumably, he preaches if this Charlie Bradshaw mystery, his fourth, is an example. Bradshaw, a former cop in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is a private eye there now, and, refreshingly, he is neither excessively hard-boiled nor suave. He`s pretty much an ordinary man with ordinary looks and ordinary feelings, but perceptive and good at his job. The Saratoga snapper is Victor Plotz, Bradshaw`s partner in the detective agency, who has taken a part-time job as a strolling photographer for the Bentley hotel, owned by Bradshaw`s mother, where he snaps pictures of people innocently enjoying themselves. Apparently, though, he has made a mistake because someone has tried to kill him, stolen his camera and ransacked his apartment, looking for . . . what? Meanwhile, one of the hotel maids is found stuffed in a hamper. The police hardly have time to start bungling their investigation before Bradshaw is on the case. The suspense in a Dobyns novel does not always, as they say, crackle. But he has other ways to keep you going, including precision, humor, insight and deft characterization.

The Sexual Life of Savages, by Bronislaw Malinowski (Beacon, $14.95). One of the great early works of anthropology, Malinowski`s study of courtship, marriage and family life among the Trobriand Islanders of British New Guinea has drawn critical acclaim since the day it was published in 1929. It continues to do so now, especially among anthropologists who admire the work. One of those, Annette B. Weiner of New York University, points out that Malinowski ''continues to enthrall each generation of anthropologists through its intensity, rich detail and penetrating revelations.'' The same qualities have attracted general readers. ''To write a fairly technical ethnographic treatise of 600 pages with barely a dull paragraph is a literary achievement of no mean order,'' wrote a Saturday Review critic, who called the book an

''incredible tour de force.'' Not the least of Malinowski`s contributions was his exemplary caution against making judgments of the behavior of an unfamiliar culture in terms of one`s own. Such caution might enrich today`s debates over the role of law in governing sexual behavior.

PETERSEN`S PAPERBACK PICKS

Serengeti. Mitsuaki Iwago

Great Masters of the Violin. Boris Schwarz

The Reckoning. David Halberstam

Barrier Island. John D. MacDonald

Dashiell Hammett: A Life. Diane Johnson

WORDS WORTH READING

''She (took) pleasure in creature comforts. She often thought that was how people with sadness or illness in their lives got by-by savoring their morning coffee or evening cocktail or the warmth of a favorite afghan.'' SOURCE: From Maud, by Kathleen Rockwell Lawrence

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