My Books of the Year

Ok, I hope this won't be like one of those endless and boring features in the broadsheets as Christmas approaches in which a load of old gits pick out books published by their friends this year and praise them up. You know those features? I go up and down the columns going, 'No one ever picks ME!! I hate them!! I hate them ALL!' Which isn't the best way to be going on when Santa's on his way. So now I avoid those pages, usually. Anyway - here's my list for 2009! It's a list of 15 - I've not got it down to ten yet - of my favourite books this year. I can't even rank them in order.

Best old book I wish I'd read before:
Helene Hanff - 'The Duchess of Bloomsbury'. I read 84 Charing Cross Road twenty years ago, but didn't know there was a sequel, about Hanff making her much-anticipated journey to 'literary London' at last. It's a beautiful short book, republished by Virago recently, detailing the trip in diary form. It's lovely about travel-nerves and making new friends and loving books.

Best Memoir:
Split between three. I loved Caroline Sullivan's 'Bye Bye Baby' - a massively confessional and toe-curling tale of chasing the Bay City Rollers about in the early Seventies and being a monstrously embarrassing groupie. Also, Suze Rotolo's 'A Freewheelin' Time', about her relationship with Bob Dylan and how she was never going to be anybody's groupie! And thirdly Sheila Hancock's 'The Two of Us', which I've written a little about before and still think back on as a completely uplifting book about love.

Best second novel:
Split between Caros Ruiz Zafon's 'The Angel Game' and Audrey Niffenegger's 'Her Fearful Symmetry.' Both were overlong and could have done with some taking in. Both were pretty leisurely in pace. Both had wonderfully dense, rainy atmospheres, laced with menace. Both were in the shadow of their author's first novels for me, though.

Best first novel:
'Mr Toppit' by Charles Elton. Multi-perspectived, mad family, acting badly. Loved it.

Favourite first novel - probably favourite book of the year:
'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society' by Marie Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows. Call me a softy. I read it twice. I think it's great, I really do.

Favourite book by writer who I can't believe I've never read before:
P G Wodehouse, 'Thank You, Jeeves.' What was I thinking of?

Best book about a cat:
'Dewey' by Vicki Myron. I've been a sucker for books in WH Smiths in Piccadilly Station this year. I keep picking up the things they're promoting. Pathetic, isn't it? What happened to my being all eclectic and exotic and discerning? When did I start reading sentimental stuff about cats? But I adored this book, about the town library somewhere in Iowa adopting the kitten left in its overnight book-drop drawer. I keep thinking about the moment the author had to peel him off the frozen metal of the drawer. She said his tiny pads tore away because they were stuck with the cold. It's a very touching book about pets and unconditional love.

Best novel I've had sitting on my shelves for eight years and finally got round to:
Haruki Murakami - 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.' Sorry, Vic - you were right. It's fantastic. I should have read it years ago. Contains the best scenes about sitting at the bottom of wells, and also the best torture scene of the year's reading. Gave me a harrowing afternoon in the Jardin du Luxemburg in July, reading that.

Best saga:
Maureen Lee - 'Queen of the Mersey.' Something no one would ever talk about in one of those 'Books of the Year' pieces. Too lowbrow and popular, maybe? But it's a splendid portrait of working class domestic life and a whole load of melodrama tossed into the mix. My first Maureen Lee. My Mam was right when she said she thought I'd love her books.

Best rediscovered kids' book:
'Flambards' - K.M Peyton. One of those rereadings that makes you feel that, somewhere under the skin, you've learned the whole thing by heart. Horses, old crumbling houses, biplanes and a choice of fellas - what's not to love?

Favourite audiobook:
'Elegance of the Hedgehog' - Muriel Barbery. I wonder if I'd have liked it as much if I'd just read it? Something about having those voices in my head wherever I went made this a very special experience. It's a book about thinking, and about worriting at ideas and the audiobook was a great way to experience that. I'd have loved it anyway, I'm sure.

Favourite short story collection:
'Wednesday Night Tupperware' - T A Gilbert. She's fantastic. Funny, punchy, touching. It's from a small press and needs people to get onto amazon or onto their bookshops and buy it. It needs this in a way that some of the other mass marketed, heavily-hyped things I'd read this year really don't need. Gilbert is a genuine classy talent and I hope her first novel isn't far behind. I've read some chunks of it - she's the only author on this list I happen to know personally - and I know it's going to be great.

Okay. That's my too-long list. What's yours like?