The Olive Reader

More from our lovely cousins in the UK – Paul Baggaley – who runs Harper Perennial across the pond.

What was the best book of the year?
The best books I read this year were two extraordinary memoirs by two wonderful and, it has to be said, rather eccentric British women.
Madame Depardieu and the Beautiful Strangers by Antonia Quirke (curiously published with the title Choking on Marlon Brando in the USA) is the story of a film critic who has a disturbing inability to separate her dangerous obsessions with male film stars from her own real and frankly disastrous love life. And on a similar theme, Linda Robertson’s What Rhymes with Bastard? (which will be published in April 2008) is the story of how a Scottish woman meets and marries a commitment-phobic, mentally unstable, drug-taking charmer, moves to the USA, realises she had made a terrible mistake, but finally triumphs, culminating in achieving the ultimate accolade: Ms Accordion San Francisco, 2004. Hilarious and quite often very rude.

What was the best movie?
Having grown up in the industrial north, discovered music in the punk era (and therefore followed Joy Division and New Order with utter devotion), I was very nervous about seeing Anton Corbijn’s Control. Even though the story has been told many times, the performances of Samantha Morton and in particular Sam Riley as Ian Curtis are truly revelatory and for a brief moment you somehow forget what you know will happen. And why not also (re-)watch 24 Hour Party People, a hugely entertaining film about the whole Manchester music scene and now a fitting homage to Tony Wilson who died too young this year and was one of the geniuses behind the movement.

What was the best song/album?
It is impossible to look beyond Radiohead’s magnificent In Rainbows.

Favorite Blog?
I still find postsecret fascinating. A brilliant idea: every postcard is a perfect short story.

Who was the person of the year?
Doris Lessing – age has not diminished her – nor even mellowed her. Earlier in the year I watched her enthrall a packed audience at the Hay-on-Wye festival. My moment of the year was when she is told by reporters packed on her doorstep that she has won the Nobel Prize

What is your New Year’s resolution?
Make at least one visit to New York, the most exciting city in the world.

Bonus question: Any predictions for 2008?
The incomparable beauty of Arsène Wenger’s footballing imagination will be rewarded with a major trophy (I realise this sentence this will be meaningless to 99% of blog reader)