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Books of the Year

Spectator reviewers

Wednesday, 21st November 2007

A further selection of the best and worst books of the year, chosen by some of our regular contributors

Christmas looms and loyalties divide. Should I go for the Shameless Plug or the more high-minded Service to Literature? Luckily I’m able to unite these objectives by announcing that the funniest new book I read all year (in a strong field of five) was Cooler, Faster, More Expensive: The Return of the Sloane Ranger (Atlantic, £19.99) by Peter York and a friend of mine Olivia Stewart-Liberty. Olivia is my son’s godmother and she promises to shower him with diamond-encrusted building bricks if her book becomes a Christmas bestseller. So — it’s worth every penny. As for Literature, I hope my son’s other godparent, the explorer Matthew Leeming, will read this recommendation and be inspired to complete his Afghan diary Altogether Elsewhere which Picador have been waiting for, in a state of mounting excitement, for six and a half years. Finish it, mate, and maybe they’ll let me plug it here next Christmas.

Roger Lewis

Light the candles and draw the thick velvet curtains, take a deep draught of purple wine and lift Jonathan Black’s The Secret History of the World (Quercus, £25) on to the brass eagle-shaped lectern. I was much impressed by this richly textured and magisterial omnium gatherum about conspiracy theories. Yet, ironically, the book has itself been the subject of a conspiracy, as absolutely no newspaper would permit me to review it. I know exactly how this decision came to be made. Members of that most esoteric of societies, The Ancient Conclave of Literary Editors, which meets in a Giant Pyramid under Wee Georgie Weidenfeld’s house, were frightened of what might occur if the populace had been encouraged (as Black promises) ‘to access supernatural levels of intelligence’. Another worrying recommendation was that ‘eye-to-eye meditation can also be practised in a sexual context’. When I tried that, my hairnet blew off.

The conspiracies don’t stop there. For Jonathan Black, I can reveal, is the pseudonym of Mark Booth, the highly esteemed and mischievous non-fiction editor at Random House who made Peter Kay’s memoirs into the biggest bestseller of all time and who helps ghost the Moon Goddess Jordan’s novels.

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Joe Mahoney

November 23rd, 2007 6:29pm

You have some good books I would like to read them all if I only had the time.

The power of the evasive word

Michael Howard

The Economist Book of Obituaries, by Keith Colquhoun and Ann Wroe

Deadlier than the male

Andrew Taylor

When does a novel stop being a novel and become a crime story? It’s often assumed that there is an unbridgeable gap between them, but that’s not necessarily so.