Ooooh, I’ve completed The Guardian’s 2008 book quiz. I got 17 out of 20, that’s my best ever score in a Guardian quiz. However, last week I researched and wrote this year in review article for AbeBooks so I was unusually well prepared for the tough questions thrown at me.

Speaking of the year in review, it seems a long time since George MacDonald Fraser died and started 2008 on a very gloomy note. My two most interesting moments of the year have to be Sebastian Horsley being denied entry into the United States because of ‘moral turpitude’ and Nobel judge Horace Engdahl blasting American writing as “Too isolated, too insular.” The first one made the British furious and the second one made the Americans furious.