Some heroic acts we all know. Hercules killed the Lernaean Hydra. Florence Nightingale ended the horrors of primitive hospital nursing. Nelson Mandela brought apartheid to its knees. But others, equally worthy, go unsung: such as James Smith's Booktrust “Books of the year” chart, a record of 2,175 recommendations, painstakingly compiled from the Christmas round-ups. What do Anita Brookner and Nigella Lawson have in common? They both loved Ferdinand Mount's Cold Cream. Who was the most fêted publisher? Faber, with 138 mentions.

The overall “winner” - the book that enjoyed more yuletide praise than any other - is Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. The New York-set novel of a Dutch banker who finds redemption through cricket is “so formidably well-written that it has you anxious to get back to it” (Sebastian Barry, The Guardian), and with 17 mentions it outstripped the Man Booker-winning The White Tiger (which got seven). Barry's own Booker contender The Secret Scripture was the third highest rated novel (after Zoe Heller's The Believers): it's “far more exuberant and joyful than a brief line of summary might suggest”, according to Alex Clark in The TLS.

Most nonfiction titles were drowned out by the applause for Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder, a study of science in the Romantic period, but memoirs from J.G. Ballard and Ferdinant Mound, and Alex Ross's history of 20th Century music The Rest is Noise also rose to the top of the heap.

Read highlights from the chart at booktrust.org.uk

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