For a selection of the year's best movies, see CINEMA.

TELEVISION

Wed., Dec. 24

Donna Reed Show (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.)* Cheops-faced Clown Buster Keaton makes one of his rare appearances outside old movies. He plays a Santa Claus who puts hospitalized children in stitches.

Christmas (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Bishop Fulton J. Sheen applies the Nativity story to 20th century life. Services follow over ABC at 10:45 p.m. from Washington's Lutheran Church of the Reformation, which boasts one of the best choirs in the U.S.

Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). An uninterrupted plum pudding, with Actor Victor Tory reciting Dickens, Comedian Dick Van Dyke pantomiming tree decorators, Newscaster Douglas Edwards reading the New York Sun's 1897 editorial, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

St. Patrick's Cathedral (NBC, 12-1:45 a.m.). Midnight Mass from New York's best-known Roman Catholic church.

Thurs., Dec. 25

Washington Cathedral (NBC, 9-10 a.m.). Christmas Day services at the capital's leading Episcopal church.

Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). Tchaikovsky's delightful Christmas ballet, The Nutcracker, as staged by famed Choreographer George Balanchine. Along with 40 children, the dancers include 55 adult members of the New York City Ballet, led by Soloists Diana Adams and Allegra Kent. For viewers who need words as well, Actress June Lockhart narrates live and in color.

Fri., Dec. 26

Walt Disney Presents (ABC, 8-9 p.m.). The Hollywood Pied Piper's new Story of Robin Hood, filmed in authentic English underbrush with an all-English cast headed by Richard Todd as the harmless Hood. First of a two-part legend.

Sun., Dec. 28

Johns Hopkins File 7 (ABC, 11:30 a.m.-12). Nothing like a new look at the earth after Christmas, and this one is a fast summing up of what 10,000 scientists from 66 nations have learned during the International Geophysical Year.

Bishop Pike (ABC, 12-12:30 p.m.). The celebrated Protestant Episcopal churchman, who believes that man has trouble enough below, poses a good question: "Why go to the moon?" His guest: Chemist Linus Pauling.

The Year Gone By (CBS, 3:30-5:30 p.m.). A fat table of contents of U.S. life in 1958, as ticked off by eleven scenarists including Critic John Mason Brown, Editor Russell Lynes, Educator James B. Conant, Newscaster Howard K. Smith.

Kaleidoscope (NBC, 5-6 p.m.) Eleven NBC correspondents flung in from the ends of the earth hold a round-table seminar of what goes from Washington to Moscow.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7) Woodrow Wilson: The Fight for Peace. A retelling of President Wilson's famed, losing fight for the League of Nations. Narrator: Walter Cronkite.

The Chevy Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.) For the second time this year Dinah Shore presents Mike Nichols and Elaine May, the barstool-to-barstool comedy team and wittiest dialectical immaterialists in show business.

Mon., Dec. 29

Voice of Firestone (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). A sentimental musical journey through Manhattan night life, aided by Pianist Erroll Garner, Singers Eartha Kitt, Hildegarde, Bill Tabbert, and Opera Soprano Lisa Delia Casa.

Desilu Playhouse (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Jo Van Fleet and Franchot Tone in an adaptation of Novelist Kay Boyle's Crazy Hunter, the story of a young girl's faith and patience in training a blind horse.

THEATER

On Broadway

J.B. Archibald MacLeish's re-enactment and restatement of the Book of Job is a generally impressive, often theatrically vibrant verse-play in which Job becomes a modern symbol of suffering. Despite shortcomings, the play represents an effort of a sort and size rare in today's U.S. theater. With Pat Hingle, Christopher Plummer, Raymond Massey; directed by Elia Kazan.

Flower Drum Song. Rodgers and Hammerstein's nicely acted, opulently staged, routinely smooth musical of San Francisco's Chinatown. With a couple of delightful Oriental dolls, Miyoshi Umeki and Pat Suzuki.

The Pleasure of His Company. As a prodigal father playing hob with his daughter's wedding plans, Cyril Ritchard is a superb specimen of a middle-aged enfant terrible.

A Touch of the Poet. A garrulous, alcoholic innkeeper, his dream world gone awry, gives Playwright Eugene O'Neill an excuse for a little too much talk, but the evening still adds up to fine theater. With Eric Portman, Helen Hayes, Kim Stanley.

The Music Man. As jolly as Santa.

My Fair Lady. The girl with the ten-million-dollar smile (the estimated gross by year's end), and every penny well earned.

Two for the Seesaw. Two lonely people in New York's late and early light, too much in love--and a little too neurotic--to say good night. The entire cast: Dana Andrews and Anne Bancroft.

On Tour

My Fair Lady in CHICAGO, Music Man in SAN FRANCISCO, Two for the Seesaw in CHICAGO are accurate echoes of the Broadway productions (see above).

Look Back in Anger. Ranting and raving with articulate and often artistic fury at just about everything Playwright John Osborne can think of. In WASHINGTON.

Sunrise at Campobello. Franklin D. Roosevelt's toughest years of personal ordeal--from the day he contracted polio at Campobello to the day he nominated Al Smith for the presidency. In DETROIT.

Li'l Abner. A lusty copy of Al Capp's comic-strip characters, with some lilting Dogpatch music. In TORONTO.

Romanoff and Juliet. Actor Peter Ustinov does a fine job with Playwright Ustinov's international farce. In CHICAGO.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, by Nikos Kazantzakis, translated by Kimon Friar. Greece's late, famed man of letters picks up where Homer left off with this boldly soaring poem in which high adventure, brutality and erotic appetite are finally subordinated to a quest for self-knowledge and God.

The Visitors, by Mary McMinnies. Diplomatic diversions in a not-too-fictional Iron Curtain country--a kind of Absurdity Sweepstakes, in which Western folly and a ham-handed dictatorship run neck and neck.

The Prospects Are Pleasing, by Honor Tracy. Home truths about Ireland and the eccentric posturings of the Irish, told with a sly smile by a writer who regards the old sod as nothing sacred.

Henry Adams: The Middle Years, by Ernest Samuels. Boston's testy Brahmin found life pleasant in those charmed years when his Eve--Marian ("Clover") Hooper--was in wifely charge of the education of Henry Adams.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote. The fictional season's most endearing bad little good girl, Holly Golightly, bewildered and a little afraid, in a lot of beds she never made.

Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery. Monty has discovered a new weapon--ink--and he splashes it on friend and foe alike.

Leyte, by Samuel Eliot Morison. One of history's decisive naval engagements masterfully recreated.

Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak. The book without a country that honors all humanity, including Russia, though its rulers kept their country's greatest living poet from accepting the Nobel Prize.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. A comedy of horrors whose aberrant love theme and brilliant writing make it a kind of fictional black valentine.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak (1)*

2. Lolita, Nabokov (2)

3. Around the World with Auntie Mame, Dennis (3)

4. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (6)

5. From the Terrace, O'Hara

6. Women and Thomas Harrow, Marquand (4)

7. Exodus, Uris (5)

8. Victorine, Keyes (9)

9. Anatomy of Murder, Traver (7)

10. The Best of Everything, Jaffe (10)

NONFICTION

1. Only in America, Golden (1)

2. Aku-Aku, Heyerdahl (2)

3. Wedemeyer Reports! (7)

4. The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery (3)

5. Beloved Infidel, Graham and Frank

6. Chicago: A Pictorial History, Kogan and Wendt (9)

7. The Affluent Society, Galbraith

8. Brave New World Revisited, Huxley

9. 'Twixt Twelve and Twenty, Boone

10. The New Testament in Modern English, translated by Phillips (5)

*All times E.S.T.

*Position on previous list.

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