The truth about those Christmas book lists

The irony is, the best book you've read this year wasn't published this year, unless you never read anything

The newspapers, around this time of year, start to fill up with "Books of the Year" supplements, to the general bemusement of the reading public. What, you imagine them asking, is going on here? Why should I be interested in a recommendation or two from a motley crew of non-reading celebrities, hard-bitten hacks, and august litterateurs?

The newspapers, around this time of year, start to fill up with "Books of the Year" supplements, to the general bemusement of the reading public. What, you imagine them asking, is going on here? Why should I be interested in a recommendation or two from a motley crew of non-reading celebrities, hard-bitten hacks, and august litterateurs?

To everyone involved in them, of course, or to anyone who might conceivably benefit from them, the racket is completely apparent. Literary editors like them because you can ask people to write a couple of paragraphs of recommendation for nothing, and pretty quickly you've filled up two or three pages without actually paying anyone in return. Publishers like them because, unlike professional reviewing, they are pure PR, and because they will concentrate the minds of the punters as they head off on their Christmas shopping expeditions – it is well known that most people only buy books before their summer holidays and as last-minute Christmas presents.

And contributors like them because it lets them be much more shameless than in any other circumstances. Contrary to general belief, reviewers don't spend their time promoting books by their friends, or dissing their enemies; literary editors, if they do their jobs, would not stand for that for a moment. No one wants a contributor who spends his time pursuing ancient vendettas, or foisting hopeless books by mistresses on the hapless readership.

The general rule, as far as proper reviewing goes, is that you don't review books by someone with whom you are good enough friends for them to have been in your house, or you in theirs; nor should you review a book by someone who in the past has been rude about you in print. I've broken these rules very occasionally in the past, when I felt very strongly about a book, but generally stick to them. Party acquaintances are fair game in either direction.

But when it comes to "Books of the Year", a certain slackness takes over, and I don't see why one shouldn't start plugging one's friends' books – it is terribly frustrating, after all, that professional propriety should impose a Trappist silence when a friend publishes a really brilliant and fascinating book. So it is a good opportunity to let a friend know how much you liked their book. The crucial point is that you should absolutely mean it, and be confident that you'd have liked the book whatever the circumstances, and not expect anything in return.

My general practice, writing recommendations for these things, is to plug a book by a friend which I haven't written about otherwise; to recommend a really first-rate book which probably doesn't need much recommendation, like Claire Tomalin's Pepys or AN Wilson's The Victorians; to mention an instalment in a major scholarly project of the sort which might not get reviewed in any other way, such as Pickering and Chatto's De Quincey edition or, this year, the last volume in Oxford's magnificent edition of Dickens's letters; and then something wildly abstruse and preferably in German.

That seems to do the trick, and most people have rather a similar template in mind. Leaving aside the sort of people, generally politicians, who have only just got round to Captain Corelli's Mandolin, most recommendations do seem to be a mixture of books by best friends and books you've never heard of.

But if sometimes that is just showing off, I did want strongly to recommend a book that most people didn't notice, Laurence Kelly's Life of Griboyedov. Griboyedov is remembered, if at all, for one of the early masterpieces of the Russian stage, Woe from Wit, but this sensationally thorough piece of research follows his extraordinary career of duelling and plotting, exile and rehabilitation, through the opening gambits of the Great Game to a violent death in Tehran. Most scholars of the subject are limited to one set of archives or another, but Kelly seems to be telling the whole story. It is a genuinely important and exciting book.

The irony in all this is that the best book you've read this year certainly wasn't published this year, unless you never read anything. For some reason I'd never read Conrad's Chance until this summer, and was transfixed by it, but you'd feel rather dilatory recommending that to anyone.

The other irony is that, like most professionals, I certainly don't want any more books for Christmas – not funny books, not fashionable novels, and certainly nothing recommended in any Christmas round-up. Indeed, I was rather hoping to spend the entire Christmas period throwing chocolates at the Queen's message and helping my niece to paint My Little Pony with granny's lipstick. Somehow, devoting any time at all to anything "heartrending", anything "profoundly moving", anything which The Sunday Times promises will make you laugh out loud on public transport – it just doesn't seem very tempting.

p.hensher@independent.co.uk