The most chosen books of the year

Whichever term you prefer, it is a fact that Books of the Year choices are best weighed en masse, rather than credited individually. Dr Johnson generously allowed that a man is not under oath in lapidary inscriptions. Reviewers feel just the same when invited to choose their books of the year.

That's why so many freely testify to old friendships and longstanding loyalties of one sort or another (sapphism, Wales, post-colonialism). That's how so many reviewers, including such bastions of probity as AS Byatt and the Archbishop of Canterbury, manage to make their "choice" several times over for the year: some of them divertingly different, some stoutly the same.

No embarrassment need be felt, for these selections are not to be understood as any kind of eternal testament. Many are little more than a stamp-saving literary Christmas card - or not even that, just a cheery little wave across a crowded room.

Nevertheless, the wisdom of crowds prevails. Taken together, books of the year choices do reliably reveal the most highly rated titles, so here, by way of a last-minute Christmas shopping list, is a conspectus.

In fiction, the clear winner was Alan Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child (Picador, £20), chosen some 16 times in the newspapers and magazines I've contrived to collate, followed by Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (Corsair, £16.99), named more than a dozen times.

Edward St Aubyn's At Last (Picador, £16.99) and Ali Smith's There but for the (Hamish Hamilton, £16.99) were cited more than half a dozen times each, followed not too far behind by Julian Barnes's Man Booker winner, The Sense of an Ending (Cape, £12.99). Barnes himself courteously nominated the St Aubyn and the Hollinghurst as among the home-grown fiction he has most admired.

In the more varied field of non-fiction, the winner with 10 votes was Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life (Viking, £30), followed by Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (Cape, £14.99).

After that, All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945 by Max Hastings (HarperPress, £30) was most often chosen, with multiple mentions also for Craig Brown's One on One (4th Estate, £16.99) and Nicola Shulman's Graven with Diamonds (Short Books, £20) - impressive, given her subject (Sir Thomas Wyatt).

If crowdsourcing is not for you, books of the year choices also yield individual recommendations, from contributors not merrily playing the game, that are so convincing as to be obviously worth heeding.

Following up on these, I have already read and greatly enjoyed Thin Paths: Journeys in and around an Italian Mountain Village by Julia Blackburn (Cape, £17.99) and The Vagabond's Breakfast by Richard Gwynn (Alcemi, £9.99) and intend next to try Teju Cole's Open City (Faber, £12.99) and People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman by Richard Lloyd Parry (Cape, £17.99).

As it happens, these last were chosen by several individuals; sometimes one is all it takes, though.