Writers fixate on extreme passions

Bookstores and libraries don't have sections for "Extreme Writing," but perhaps they should, considering the number of memoirs about obsessions and other forms of going to extremes:

*365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy, by Charla Muller with Betsy Thorpe (Berkley paperback original, $14, out today), is by a 41-year-old mother of two who vows to have sex with her husband every night for a year.

*A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travel in the World of Atomic Weaponry, by Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger (Bloomsbury, $24.95, in stores), is by a husband-and-wife team who find missile silos and secret underground bunkers more exciting than any resort.

*A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-year-old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL, by Stefan Fatsis (Penguin, July 3, $25.95), picks up where George Plimpton left off in Paper Lion, his 1966 classic about trying to play quarterback for ...