Julian Baggini
The idea of a book called On Bullshit (Princeton University Press) by an eminent philosopher is so amusing and daring that no one seems to have noticed Harry G Frankfurt's essay is not only unexceptional, it's also ridiculously short to sell as a book at £6.50, especially as it was available on the web until the publishers realised they could cash in. Something doesn't smell right.
Christopher Bray
Tim Parks's Medici Money (Profile) was that most remarkable of things: an indigestible bore from one of the most greedily readable novelists around.
Carmen Callil
As an addict of thrillers, detective stories, crime, spy and conspiracy novels, and having just emerged from reading the complete works of Henning Mankell (crime novelist extraordinaire), I pounced upon Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (Corgi) expecting great things. This is the kind of prose I read: "Sophie looked at him: 'You're saying the Christian Church was to be carried on by a woman?' 'That was the plan. Jesus was the original feminist. He intended for the future of his Church to be in the hands of Mary Magdalene.' 'And Peter had a problem with that,' Langdon said . . . Again, Sophie was speechless . . ." And more, much more, like it. The goddess sect of 1960s feminism crossed with every lunatic mystery, grail and ley line poured out by the French industry surrounding Rennes-le-Chateau. Add the heated prose and hilarious cliches of Elinor Glyn, and you have The Da Vinci Code. Groans and laughter - and the waste-paper basket.
Rachel Cooke
I have read so many disappointing books this year that it's a hard choice. But it's probably a toss-up between Ekow Eshun's African memoir Black Gold of the Sun (Hamish Hamilton), which is self-regarding and a bit pointless, and Dylan Jones's book about his love affair with music, iPod, Therefore I Am (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), which is, well, self-regarding and a bit pointless.
Amanda Craig
The most overrated novel of the year was Ian McEwan's Saturday (Jonathan Cape). Long before John Banville's philippic in the New York Review of Books, I pointed out how ludicrous the climax was - the idea you could deflate a crazy rapist by reciting "Dover Beach" when naked is almost as risible as the brain-surgeon hero then operating on his daughter's assailant. If more women had been allowed to review it, this would surely have been spotted earlier.
Edwina Currie
John Banville's Booker-winning gobbledegook, The Sea (Picador), was my worst book of the year. I can never figure out what's going on in his writing. It's tedious to read, and dissatisfying. At the end I feel as if I've dutifully eaten a meal of indigestible curds, resulting in nothing but a headache.
