Not all book reviewers are as despondent and sore oppressed as the one depicted by Orwell in a bleak essay. Some of us, after years in the game, still tear open Jiffy bags eagerly in the hope, if not always the expectation, of enjoyment.
All the same when it comes to the annual task of selecting Books of the Year, one is sadly at least as aware of the books that have disappointed as of those which have delighted. That said, selecting 10 or a dozen to recall and recommend to readers who may have missed them is never easy and rarely fair. There’s a tendency to favour those books read recently and to have a dimmer awareness of those read in the first months of the year.
