SEASON'S READINGS

GOOD THINGS ALSO COME IN BIG packages. A timely example is the venerable art book, a Christmas delight for the MTVer as well as those who still think a VCR is some sort of honor bestowed by Queen Elizabeth. Bless the old darlings and the authors, photographers and publishers who stubbornly ignore the electronic onslaught to labor with inspiration and care to bring us the treasures of the world's museums, the pleasures of distant lands and the handiwork of dreamers. Here are some of this season's finest:

AMERICANA

1. THE LAST STEAM RAILROAD IN AMERICA Photographs by O. Winston Link; text by Thomas H. Garver (Abrams; $49.50). If you were in the driver's seat, it was the embodiment of Manifest Destiny. If you were in its way, as were the tribes of the Great Plains, it was the iron horse, snorting emissary of the unstoppable paleface invasion. Today the sooty beast is the stuff of nostalgia. This is a book of homage to those vanished symbols of expansion and industrial might. The evocative old images recall a time when belching smoke and slashing rail lines were signs of progress, not pollution.

2. FOLK ART IN AMERICAN LIFE By Robert Bishop and Jacqueline M. Atkins (Viking Studio Books; $29.95). Like jazz, folk art resists the advances of formal criticism. So it is a relief to hear the authors conclude their scholarly preface with the statement, "Let the objects themselves speak to the intellect, to the senses, to the spirit." That is precisely what they do in this survey of down-home paintings, needlecraft, carvings and sculpture, like Clark Coe's wood-and-metal Man on a Hog. Most ambitious of all are the free-spirited constructions like James Hampton's altar assembled from garage-sale recyclings covered in silver and gold foil.

3. THE SMITHSONIAN By James Conaway (Knopf; $60). This handsome volume commemorates the Smithsonian Institution's 150th anniversary. Ironically, the Smithsonian was founded with a financial gift from an Englishman who never set foot in the States. James Smithson was a noted mineralogist who, stung by the Royal Society's refusal to publish his scientific papers, bequeathed the U.S. government -L-100,000 to build "an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge." Today its trove ranges from the Wright brothers' airplane to a prototype of the Apple personal computer.

4. THE DISNEY THAT NEVER WAS By Charles Solomon (Hyperion; $40). As productive as the studio was during Walt Disney's life (he died in 1966), many projects dear to his heart never made it to the screen. This book is a reverie on an art form whose possibilities were still being explored. The stars are not the fabled animators but the conceptual artists whose work they drew on. Here is Mickey way back when he was a rodent outlaw; drenching pastels of fairyland by Sylvia Holland; a surreal grand piano with a fierce trail of tyrannical music hovering above it--by an unknown artist. These pictures really move.

ART AND DESIGN

5. HIDDEN TREASURES REVEALED By Albert Kostenevich (Abrams; $49.50). If you didn't have the frequent-flyer miles to pop over to St. Petersburg last year for the "Hidden Treasures" exhibition at Russia's Hermitage Museum, be advised that the show has been extended until March 31, 1996. Or consider these 74 reproductions of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from the museum's previously covert collection. Most of these works by Monet, Renoir, Degas and other French masters were "liberated" from private German collections after World War II and for many years were thought to have been destroyed in the conflict. Preserved during the cold war, the pictures are back in circulation, as ageless and apolitical as ever.

6. GIOTTO By Francesca Flores d'Arcais (Abbeville; $95). That Europe's old churches are monuments to high art as well as the Holy Spirit is nowhere more evident than in Italy, especially in the work of Giotto di Bondone (circa 1266-1337). His achievement, acclaimed in clear word and luminous illustration, was to introduce naturalism and drama to Byzantine and medieval art. Flores d'Arcais's scholarship is a reminder that what was revolutionary in the 14th century can still seem visionary today.

7. GEOFFREY BEENE Text by Brenda Cullerton (Abrams; $49.50). This harmonious retrospective shows that in skillful hands, fashion can be both bold and fad-free. Over 30 years, Beene has gone his own American way, far from the hot spots of Paris and Milan. His knowledge of fabric is extensive. Better still, he drapes closely to the contours of a real woman's body. Dramatic pictures by several photographers illustrate how the style of this tactile artist evolved, and a spirited coda offers some tart bits of Beeniana. For example: "Dressing for success is something unsuccessful women do." 8. FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED: DESIGNING THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE By Charles E. Beveridge and Paul Rocheleau (Rizzoli; $70). Anyone who strolls through Central Park, the campus of Stanford University or the grounds around the U.S. Capitol can give thanks to Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), America's greatest landscape architect. Add to those legacies his designs for green spaces around cities, his progressive writings and a tireless concern for social reform. This superb survey documents a major civic achievement.

CULTURE

9. CREATING FRENCH CULTURE Edited by Marie-Helene Tesniere and Prosser Gifford (Yale; $65). A lavish labor of love that perhaps only libraries, in this case France's Bibliotheque Nationale, can inspire. Twelve centuries of manuscripts, from medieval illuminations to the writings of De Gaulle and Sartre, are reproduced here with an informative if dry text. It argues that in France, the link between libraries and power is important, perhaps never more so than now, when the state is moving the vast resource to a new site at the rate of 50,000 artifacts a day.

10. TSAR: THE LOST WORLD OF NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA By Peter Kurth (Little, Brown; $60). Perhaps it's because we know the Russian imperial family were slaughtered in a Siberian hovel that their graceful life has such enduring appeal. Nicholas and Alexandra were shutterbugs themselves and kept scrapbooks that record the growth of their pretty children and the family's annual progress through palaces and yachts. The heart of the book is its eloquent detail. The tsarevich's little drum, the tsarina's snowy parasols have the impact of domestic artifacts found in a mummy's tomb, bringing a remote past shockingly alive.

TRAVEL

11. TUSCANY Photographs by Sonja Bullaty and Angelo Lomeo; text by Marie-Ange Guillaume (Abbeville; $45). Tuscany ages well. It probably has something to do with the food, the wine, the art and centuries of adoration by foreigners. That this New York City husband-and-wife photography team can retain an enthusiastic eye after 30 years of travel through the region is evident in their fresh images of familiar Tuscan sights: Florence's rooftops, bell towers and famous statuary; Pisa's leaning tower; country villas and vineyards.

12. QUEEN MARY By James Steele. (Phaidon/Chronicle; $55). The wish book of the year. The liner's glory days between the wars coincided with the apogee of Art Deco. This volume can be enjoyed as a catalog of an elegant, seductive style or, better yet, as a guide to travel in a luxury no longer available, even to the rich. The swimming pools of the three classes are so beckoning it is hard to choose among them. The insinuating lighting and the low, enticing lounge fittings call for ambrosia and a suspension of time.