Trips Made by Car, by Compact Disc

If you’re ever stuck in a seedy motel on a dusty highway, “The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America” (HarperCollins) would be the perfect book. Many of the places Bill Bryson describes are so dreadful, you would feel lucky by comparison.

Iowa-born, but living in England, Bryson came home in 1988 and put 13,978 miles on his mother’s Chevy hunting for the “perfect” small town he remembered from boyhood TV. “It was always the same,” he writes, “a trim and sunny little city with a tree-lined Main Street full of friendly merchants.” A Wally and Beaver town. Some towns he found came close; most didn’t. His descriptions range from hilarious to poetic to scathing. The scathing parts are great fun.

One disadvantage: He flings out so many comments on the state of American small-town life, the result is overkill. It’s not a book to read at one sitting, more to be read a chapter at a time, pausing for a good think.

In the end, after rattling across 38 states, Bryson admits that, warts and all, it’s a terrific country.

“I saw pretty much everything I wanted to see and a good deal that I didn’t,” he writes. “I had much to be grateful for. I didn’t get shot or mugged. The car didn’t break down. I wasn’t once approached by a Jehovah’s Witness. I still had $68 and a clean pair of underpants. Trips don’t come much better than that.”

WENDY BRYSON

Cardiff by the Sea

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I discovered the works of Harlan Ellison in my teens. By foraging through used-book stores and snatching up periodic reprints, I managed to acquire many of his works from the 1960s and 1970s. Now, four decades into his career, the Edgeworks series (White Wolf Publishing) is bringing most of his works back into print. Each hard-bound volume includes two works and some new material.

For my money, the newly released Volume 4, which republishes the short story collections “Love Ain’t Nothing but Sex Misspelled” and “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World,” is the most exciting volume yet. It reminded me of why Ellison’s work first excited me, and why he still ranks among my favorite authors.

“Love Ain’t Nothing” is an excellent example of his mainstream work, including “The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie,” a short novel of 1960s Hollywood.

Ellison is best known as a fantasist, and “Beast,” which includes the classic story “The Chronicles of a Boy and His Dog,” represents some of his best work in this genre from that period.

I urge you to pick the book up while you can. It’s rare to find an Ellison title in a used-book store. His readers know these are keepers.

BILL KELLY

Glendale

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It is seldom that a book can change your life, so I want to share one that did that for me.

I’m an engineer with Boeing / Rocketdyne. A colleague who loved opera used to tease me: “With all your education, shouldn’t you know something about opera?”

Finally, he gave me a new book called “The Young Person’s Guide to the Opera,” by Ariane Csonka Comstock (Monarch Books).

“Read it to your kid,” he said. “At least he’ll get an education.”

My son is only 2, so I looked through the book myself. An illustration from “La Boheme” caught my eye. I recognized the singer’s name from a Luciano Pavarotti CD my wife had bought. I read the story. Opera was not so intimidating after all. That made me want to hear the music, so I went out and bought my first opera recording. My wife and I really enjoyed it.

A couple of weeks later, we heard a song from “Tosca” on TV. That was in the book, so we read the story and wound up buying another CD. “Tosca” was about Rome, where we’d had a romantic vacation, so it was even better.

Now we’ve decided to do a different opera every month. We’ll read the story, get the CD--and when our son gets old enough, we can share this new world with him, thanks to “The Young Person’s Guide to the Opera.”

RICK FRENCH

Thousand Oaks

* What’s that book on your night table? Any good? Send us a review. We’re especially interested in hearing about fiction that you don’t see reviewed in The Times, but feel free to send us your opinions of whatever it is you are reading. Keep the reviews short (200 words tops), and send them (with your phone number) to Readers Reviews, Life & Style, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles CA 90053 or fax them to (213) 237-0732. We’ll print the most interesting ones every other week. Sorry, but submissions cannot be returned.

* Next Week: Kevin Baxter on books for children and young adults.