Anna Quindlen's New York Times column used to be relegated to the Living or Home section, but the thoughtful Pulitzer Prize winner has been upgraded to the op-ed page, where her essays now appear twice a week. Her latest book, Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public and the Private, is a collection of those pieces, and it lands at No. 7 in its first week on the charts. FICTION WEEKS ON LIST

1 The Client 6 John Grisham, Doubleday, $23.50 2 The Bridges Of Madison County 35 Robert James Waller, Warner, $14.95 3 ''J'' Is For Judgment 2 Sue Grafton, Holt, $21.95 4 Star Wars 3: Last Command 1 Timothy Zahn, Bantam, $21.95 5 American Star 4 Jackie Collins, Simon & Schuster, $23 6 Winter Prey 3 John Sandford, Putnam, $21.95 7 Forward The Foundation 3 Isaac Asimov, Doubleday, $23.50 8 A Season In Purgatory 1 Dominick Dunne, Crown, $22 9 Einstein's Dreams 11 Alan Lightman, Pantheon, $17 10 Degree Of Guilt 14 Richard North Patterson, Knopf, $23

NONFICTION

1 Beating The Street 6 Peter Lynch with John Rothchild, Simon & Schuster, $23 2 Women Who Run With The Wolves 34 Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ballantine, $20 3 Healing And The Mind 11 Bill Moyers, Doubleday, $25 4 The Way Things Ought To Be 31 Rush Limbaugh, Pocket Books, $22 5 Harvey Penick's Little Red Book 35 Harvey Penick and Bud Shrake, Simon & Schuster, $19 6 Bankruptcy 1995 22 Harry E. Figgie, Little, Brown, $19.95 7 Thinking Out Loud 1 Anna Quindlen, Random House, $22 8 Care Of The Soul 11 Thomas Moore, HarperCollins, $22.50 9 Official And Confidential: The Secret Life Of J. Edgar Hoover 9 Anthony Summers, Putnam, $25.95 10 Preparing For The Twenty-First Century 6 Paul Kennedy, Random House, $25