...and then there were none

...which has nothing much to do with this post, does it?

I admit that I am living a few centuries in the past in my reading habits. The best thing I read all year (late getting around to it, I admit) was a little volume called "The Iliad" involving a lot of ill-tempered people sulking and going into battle and finding out that the Gods are even more sullen and bad-tempered than they are...
But of the slightly more than 100 books I read in 2007, around 20 were actually published within the last 14 or 15 months or so - rather than recited from memory or etched into stone tablets or shouted out at dirty mobs in the Globe.
The best, in the order I read them and not in order of preference:

"Popeye: "I Yam What I Yam" ' by E.C. Segar (the first volume in Fantagraphics reprint of the original comic strips..)
"Mere Anarchy" by Woody Allen
"Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar" by Dori Hadar
"Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock’n’roll’s last stand in Hollywood" by Domenic Priore
"Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl" by Steven Bach
"At the Same Time: Essays & Speeches" by Susan Sontag
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
"Things I’ve Said, But Probably Shouldn’t Have" by Bruce Dern with Christopher Fryer and Robert Crane
"The Uncommon Reader" by Alan Bennett

Also of note:
"Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" by Neal Gabler
"I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon" by Crystal Zevon
"Spook Country" by William Gibson
"Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector" by Mick Brown
"The Book of David" by David Steinberg
"Diaries 1969 – 1979: The Python Years" by Michael Palin
"Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life" by Steve Martin