In 2006 I have been mainly reading...

It's that time of year again, when pseuds and poseurs (sorry, I mean, public intellectuals, of course) the length and breadth of the country are invited by broadsheet and highbrow weekly to name their books of the year. History always gets a good look-in, although I remain sceptical about food critics who claim to have read 1500-page histories of European culture since 1800... Still, I must admit that I am a bit of a skimmer and dipper when it comes to reading non-fiction, so when I tell you that my books of the year are Vic Gatrell's City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London and David Cannadine's Mellon: An American Life, please don't quiz me on what happens on page 325 or chapter 12. I declare an interest in both cases - I was in Vic's special subject class as an undergrad at Cambridge while he was writing City, and David C is my current boss - but even allowing for ingrained loyalty it's hard not to be impressed by the dazzling combination of scholarship and literary colour that both authors pull off so brilliantly. My other picks of 2006 if you're interested (and I can't imagine why you would be) include Peter Mandler's The English National Character, and Boyd Hilton's A Mad Bad and Dangerous People, and titles on my all-too-long 'to-read' list include Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction, Peter Hennessy's Having It So Good and Paul Kennedy's Parliament of Man. I won't say any more in case you think me a pseud or poseur, but I'd be interested to know what fellow Labbers have been reading and enjoying this year...