Inside the List - NYTimes.com Nothing Fancy: Wally Lamb's fifth novel, "We Are Water" - about a dysfunctional family coming together for a same-sex wedding - enters the hardcover fiction list at No. Lamb was one of the early winners of the Oprah Winfrey sweepstakes; he vaulted onto the list in 1997 when his debut, "She's Come Undone," was chosen for her book club, and all of his novels since have also been best sellers. Along the way, readers have gotten to know the modest corner of southeastern Connecticut where much of Lamb's work takes place. "I often write a fictional version of my hometown of Norwich," he told the student newspaper at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia last month. Eastern Connecticut is largely influenced by Boston: you'll find we're mostly Red Sox fans instead of Yankee fans. . . . We use the word "wicked" as an adverb. That is the Connecticut I write about because it's what I know. Most people think of the fancy parts - Westport, Greenwich, country clubs - but that's not the Connecticut I know. You Are Getting Sleepy: When the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" recently to promote his collection "Things That Matter," new at No. 4 on the hardcover nonfiction list, he had an amusing exchange with the host Steve Inskeep about his early career as a psychiatrist. "When I was at Mass General," Krauthammer said, "I learned to do hypnosis, believe it or not." "I would think you could have used that hypnosis technique when you're on television," Inskeep replied. That could be a very effective thing to do to people. "That's exactly what I've been doing for the last 10 years," Krauthammer told him. "And I didn't even know," Inskeep said. Apparently it worked. Ghost Writer: "I'm not from Long Island, I don't speak to dead people, and I haven't bought hair spray since 1984." That's Kristina Grish, near the end of "There's More to Life Than This," explaining the hurdles she faced in writing a book with the popular TV spiritualist Theresa Caputo. Considering that Caputo's show is called "Long Island Medium," and that she wears her hair like Ziggy Stardust, you can see the problem. (Not that it's hurt their collaboration any; after four weeks on the advice, how-to and miscellaneous list, the book remains at No. Grish is entertaining about what it was like to be Caputo's ghostwriter - for one thing, she says, both she and her more skeptical husband began to believe spirits were visiting their house. "I wondered if my imagination was running wild because I was so close to the material," she writes, "but then our dog Izzy started to act strange." The visitations stopped once the book was done. The best comparison I can make is when your home is really dusty, and you don't even realize it until after you vacuum and the air feels so much clearer and lighter.