I read so many books last year as part of my research for Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them that I have taken it easy this year, and taken more time to enjoy novels such as Salman Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown and  Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

Among the non-fiction books I read, five of the best were:

Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist
Tim has a knack for making economics -€“ which is basically, he says, about who gets what and why - interesting and relevant, and he uses the so-called dismal science to explain how the world around us really works. UK | US (I don't make a penny from these Amazon links)

Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics
Levitt is a brilliant economist, and Freakonomics is full of original insights. But it is also, unfortunately, full of puff and padding; the article from the New York Times magazine on which it is based is much better. UK | US

Anna Lee Saxenian, The New Argonauts
Forget the brain drain: today's highly skilled migrants -€“ the new Argonauts - circulate between the US and developing countries, creating new technology businesses and spreading prosperity along the way. UK | US

Niall Ferguson, The Cash Nexus
Ferguson explains the importance -€“ and limits - of money in shaping history since 1700. Thought-provoking, although it inevitably fails to achieve its grand ambitions. UK | US

Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence
A Nobel laureate in economics, Sen's interests have always ranged more widely. Here, he explains how reductionist and simplistic concepts of identity can lead to violence -€“ an issue that is at the heart of the debates over multiculturalism, Islamic fundamentalism, the so-called "clash of civilisations" and much else besides. UK | US

The most over-rated book of the year:

Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat
No, it isn't. "A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century"? Pff. More like "A long-winded ego-trip by a journalist who talks to lots of VIPs but grasps very little." UK | US