A Full 'Slate'

Ben Stein's obsession with stereo equipment, Dave Eggers' abbreviated history of hand-holding, Karenna Gore Schiff's hiding from her eighth-grade English teacher. These are among the minor revelations to be found in The Slate Diaries, a new anthology compiled from four years' worth of the weekday feature in the Microsoft-owned 'zine Slate (www.slate.com). (It's also available as an e-book at bn.com.) ''Print magazines have some competitive advantages, and you can take them to the john,'' says Slate.com founder and editor in chief Michael Kinsley. ''I wanted a real-time diary where people could say what they did yesterday.'' And not just anyone merits a diary, famous or not. ''We apply an eavesdropping test,'' says Jodi Kantor, who edits the entries; they are generally posted two hours after Slate.com receives them. So just who is worthy of eavesdropping? ''We've had a UPS driver, Beck, a school nurse, and [Microsoft mogul] Bill Gates,'' Kantor says. ''The book is very democratic.''