AFRICA, ANTARCTICA DESERVE BETTER NARRATIVES.

Byline: Rich Martin Special to the Daily News

The ingredients for a great book are all there in Rick Ridgeway's ``The Shadow of Kilimanjaro'' (Henry Holt and Co., $27.50).

A romantic background in East Africa - site of fascinating history, the roots of human history, man-eating lions. The world's most fascinating collection of menacing fauna. A long hike from legendary Mount Kilimanjaro to the Indian Ocean that includes issues of ecology, hunting and the future of the African continent. And an engaging set of characters, including game wardens, guides and the author himself, a well-known Ojai adventurer.

But like a team with Super Bowl aspirations that never makes the playoffs, the 288-page book disappoints. The problem is simple: An adventure and vacation can proceed quite happily without knowing exactly what will happen at each step along the way, but a book cannot succeed without more planning and organization.

``Kilimanjaro'' starts off compelling, focusing on encounters along the 300-mile path. But it takes too many digressions and before long seems to be all in the past. The author continually changes time from the present to various pasts, sometimes leaving the reader confused. Constant flashbacks and continual time-shifting is jarring and amateurish.

Worse, soon it becomes apparent that Ridgeway is working under false pretenses: He's not writing a travel book at all but trying to preach about hunting and its relationship with ecology, particularly in Africa. While that's a worthwhile topic, starting out writing an adventure book and ending up with a lecture doesn't mix well. It's a shame, because he has some great tales.

The trek was certainly absorbing, but it's not clear which anecdotes happened in the past and which occurred on the journey. Some of the digressions were welcome - discussions of the famous man-eaters of Tsavo (the basis for ``The Ghost and the Darkness'') and Karen Blixen and ``Out of Africa.'' Others were just a confusing blend of past and present, his experiences and someone else's.

Ridgeway brings up some interesting and, at times, eloquently stated arguments, namely that there might be something dualistic in human nature that makes us want to hunt (sometimes to extinction) and conserve.

The author's real sin is organization - there is as little of it as water in a desert. The trek provides only a point of departure, and had he strayed so far afield in his hike as he did in his writing, Ridgeway would have found himself off the map. Our rating: Two Stars

``Time on Ice: A Winter Voyage to Antarctica'' (International Marine; $27.95), by Deborah Shapiro and Rolf Bjelke Bright, beckons readers with color photos and fascinating subject matter - a trek to the bottom of the Earth.

Parts of the work live up to the topic, but too often it drifts into the doldrums. Too many unimportant details are included - descriptions of meals, boors met along the way, irrelevant meanderings from the co-authors' personal pasts and the shipboard life of the husband-and-wife crew. Some of the dull sections could have been and should have been cut. Too often the overwritten 290 pages seem like an unedited journal.

The prose doesn't always sail smoothly. There's too much hyperbole, too many sentences ending in exclamation points. Unfortunately, the writing proves not nearly as exciting as the laudable journey or the spectacular images that illustrate it. Our rating: Two Stars.

Anyone who has spent any time at all outdoors is, shall we say, privy to the experience detailed in an odd little book about a distinctly rural form of architecture.

``Nature Calls: The History, Lore and Charm of Outhouses'' (Ten Speed Press; $12.95) by Ambler, Pa., author Dottie Booth provides an 86-page narrative and pictorial potpourri portraying outdoor potties.

Few readers, for example, probably realize that North Carolina has more outhouses than any other state. (Maybe that answers the question, ``Where did Mayberry's Andy, Opie and Aunt Bea go?'')

Nor are most youths taught that President Franklin Roosevelt's Work Projects Administration built two million outhouses. To illustrate just how much government has deteriorated since that time, Booth included an anecdote about an outhouse in the Delaware Gap National Recreation Area that cost more than $300,000 to build.

Most memorable are the anecdotes, however apocryphal they might be, about the buildings themselves. One family swears that a bear hibernated in their outhouse, forcing them to find relief elsewhere. Among the numerous pranks mentioned, students tied a neighbor's outhouse to the caboose of a train, which dragged it a goodly distance.

The private haunts of such luminaries as presidents Washington, Jefferson and Hoover are described, as well as that of late singer/songwriter Jim Croce, who had a place in Pennsylvania. Such knowledge certainly puts a fresh perspective on primitive toilets. Some facilities could accommodate a couple of visitors in one room: ``Two holes, no waiting!''

The book is appropriate for any outdoorsman with a fondness for the Nessy - one of 52 alternate words for the outhouse. Our rating: Three Stars.

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PHOTO (Color) A book on outhouses is the surprise among three new titles.

David Sprague/Daily News