At this time, it is customary for columnists, and indeed all of us, to look back at the year and reflect: to consider how far we have come, and what we may have learnt. Trouble is, I can't remember it. The year, that is. I mean, I can remember some big stuff that happened: global capitalism collapsed, the first black President of the United States was elected, the UK had one of those collective post-Diana's-death hysteria moments that we occasionally have now, over a jokey phone call to the bloke who used to play Manuel, and a dark and bitter Leonard Cohen song about the fundamental emptiness of sexual relationships (“Love is not a victory march/It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah”) was sung by The X Factor winner on the way to becoming the Christmas No 1 - but I can't really recall what I was doing for most of the year.

This is a symptom of growing old. I don't simply mean the collapse of memory. I mean that as you get farther away from youth, you no longer have markers with which to chart your life, because nothing new happens. When you're young, your life is easily chapterised. That chapter of my life started/ended when I lost my virginity; that chapter when I got married; that one when I had children; that one when I got that job; and that one when I was made redundant and ended up on the scrapheap. Once you've past all these milestones, your life plateaus out and time becomes rather indistinct (until, that is, your friends start to die: although by then, of course, you may not be able to remember that they were your friends).

Books, however, are not a bad way to redraw that map. They always form something of a lifelong backdrop, anyway - I remember the person I was, for example, when Money by Martin Amis was my favourite book - but also because it's interesting to see which books stick in the memory.

On which note: can my reading this year help me to remember this year? What, for example, was I reading last Christmas? Hmm. Nope. No idea. Well, let's just see, in no particular order, which of the 25 or so I've read this year I can bring to mind.

OK. I can remember the ones I'm reading now. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (for regular readers: yes, still: it's very long); and Exit Ghost by Philip Roth, which I've just finished. But that doesn't prove much. I know I've also read this year John Updike's The Widows of Eastwick, Julian Barnes's Nothing to Be Frightened of, Christopher Ciccione's Life with My Sister Madonna, Rachel Cusk's In the Fold, Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Eli Gottlieb's Now You See Him, and The Professor of Desire (also by Philip Roth), because I've written about them in this column. I say remember: all that means is I can type “times.doc” into the search facility on my Mac. Plus: I've definitely read some of Frank Skinner's Love, Stand-Up Comedy and The Queen of the Night, and Jonathan Ross's Why Do I Say These Things? By some, I'm referring to the bits that mention me.

But these books have all got props to help them into my memory banks. Of the others, I can recall... Meg Wolitzer's The Ten Year Nap (I took this on a trip to India - I was meant to take Glen Duncan's The Bloodstone Papers, as a gesture of coming to terms with Indian literature, but I didn't order it in time and thus my coming-to-terms-with-Indian-literature book was a bittersweet comedy about a group of school mums in Manhattan)... Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, which I loved, and think may be his best book, but I'm not 100 per cent certain I read it this year... it might have been the end of 2007... oh dear... The Dying Animal, also, yes, by Philip Roth (I'm not sure this counts as memory, as it seems to be the case that every year I will have read about three of his books whatever)... oh! Herzog! By Saul Bellow! I read that! Which is a big deal for me as I've tried for years to get through a Bellow book, and finally managed it, some time over the summer. Weirdly, though, I only remembered this after going upstairs to stare at the tower of books under my bedside table. Which is not memory, is it? It's cheating. So clearly, this momentous literary breakthrough isn't held in my head. And Marry Me by John Updike, which I read because I couldn't remember whether I'd read it or not before. And having read it (again?) am still not sure.

I feel I've conclusively failed to prove my point that books can serve as aides-mémoire. Oh well. One thing I did read this year was the first couple of pages of Teenage Flicks, a book of reminiscenses about Subbuteo by Paul Willetts, because the first couple of pages are my reminiscences. I mention this because that looks like it's going to be the way forward as I get older: getting someone else to write down my memories in a book, and then reading it, along with the sign over my bed that says You are David Baddiel; Put On Your Underpants. Happy Christmas. What year is it again?

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