In "Breath & Other Ventures," Bill Bridges has created a companion piece to his earlier "Places & Stories." But this time there's a more personal note, as he recounts how he dealt with an inherited respiratory ailment while at the same time exploring Zen breathing meditation. The "other ventures" of the title include a memoir constructed from notebooks of the 1970s, the story of a summer as a Washington newsman, an essay on "forgotten writers," and another GeeGee Dapple detective story, about a retired British editor who solves crimes through astute journalistic observation.