As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, by Laurie Lee, January 21

Here we are - one of those books you mean to read but haven't yet. I read Cider With Rosie, and this is the second volume of his autobiographical writing. From all accounts, it's a thing of beauty. Let's see...

Under the Skin by Michel Faber, 9 December

This could be a rare step into science fiction, but it's a literary sensation so that's all right. It's also been a strange movie with Scarlett Johanssen.

Michel Faber's Under the Skin concerns a woman picking up well-muscled hitch-hikers in Scotland for reasons which become clear and could turn you vegetarian.

Her alien experiences - she is an alien, not to spoil the story too much - are well set out and utterly convincing. She's not enjoying her life, but never expected much,and there's dark humour in the way she does the job, though in the end, she's broken by it.

I thought this was great.

Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates, 12 November

Here's one I liked enough to recommend to my wife. Revolutionary Road is hailed as a modern (1950s) Gatsby, and that was before Leonardo DiCaprio played the lead in both movies.

I see the comparison; it's not awash with money and privilege like Gatsby, it's a claustrophobic tale of a couple who don't love each other and are stuck in suburbia, with dreams, manipulating each other and not getting what they want.

That sounds dull. But the characters live, the examination of how they live is relentless and ruthless. This book deserves all the praise it has had. What happens is inevitable, predictable even, but still gripping.

As a side benefit, there's a chilling picture of the beginning of my job. Frank works for a bureaucratic monster that sells computers, which is obviously IBM and at the moment he stops caring for the work, he finds himself writing marketing spiel for the technology. He ends up in the beginnings of the advertising/PR industry

The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk, 23 September

The second book we have read by Turkey's Nobel Prize winning Orhan Pamuk, and a bit of a disappointment to me.

This is a short early work, and it's all very post-modern. Does it happen or doesn't it? Is the manuscript reliable? A bit Calvino, a bit Borges, apparently.

A young man sailing from Venice to Naples is seized by pirates and sold into slavery in Constantinople. As he meets a "twin" we confront the contrasts between Renaissance Europe and the Ottoman Empire, or at least that's the idea. The two form an intense master-slave relationship and go from there.

There are plagues and mad inventions, and a climax during a battle with the Poles. At the end, they've changed places - or have they? That's not a spoiler, it's telegraphed through the whole book.

I found it dull.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, 30 July

What did I miss? It's a story of Toru Watanabe, looking back on his student days and his loves.

He is obsessed by Naoko and maybe Midori loves him. But who cares? Watanabe is a boring tosser, there is nothing remotely attractive about Naoko and everyone seems to spend forever moping around obsessing about themselves, till by and large they commit suicide.

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood, 3 June

Here's a strange book. Strange and intriguing. The antireligious antihero, Hazel Motes, preaches a Church Without Christ in a Tennessee town, lives with a prostitute, gets tangled with a blind preacher and his daughter, along with a weird and dark set of characters including a man in a gorilla suit.

It's all tragic, and strange, and portentous. Well worth reading.

Tim Lott, Rumours of a Hurricane, 29 April

It's not the worst book we've read, but I found Rumours of a Hurricane by Tim Lott, supposedly "tragic and hilarious in equal measure" to be cringe-making and unlovable.

A cast of pretty obvious characters have the obvious experiences you'd expect from people going through the upheaval of the Thatcher years. A man buys his council flat, his wife has an affair, his brother is a cowboy builder, he's a printer so of course he's in the Wapping strikes.

There's a couple of moments of reality around racism, but the rest is just clinical, superior to everything, and yet wallowing in the stuff it despises.