Colossal, magisterially authoritative and yet eminently readable, the second volume of John Tyrrell's superb biography of Leos Janácek (Janácek: Tsar of the Forests; Faber, £60/offer £54) would make a wonderful present for any opera-lover with a serious interest in the 20th-century repertoire.

It traces the life, work and tangled love affairs of this intense Czech genius from the First World War — when he was mired in depression, his career stalled, his finances parlous — through his triumphant and astonishingly prolific final years, to his death in 1928. Tyrrell has written not just a superb portrait of one of opera's most original creative minds, but a gripping survey of the entire cultural and social milieu of Central Europe before Hitler reduced it to rubble. Heavy but unputdownable.

The Proms: A New History (edited by Jenny Doctor and David Wright; Thames & Hudson, £24.95/ £22.46) is, at first glance, much more superficial. I thumbed through its lavishly illustrated pages with a rather supercilious sneer at first, suspecting (not entirely wrongly) a slick marketing exercise on behalf of a venerable British institution — namely the BBC, which rescued Henry Wood's concert series after its founder's death, and has controlled it since.

But the writing is lively and intelligent (each chapter has a different author), and the personalities who leap from the pages are a fascinating bunch of musicians, promoters and rogues (sometimes all three at once). Pierre Boulez got it right when he called the Proms a “joyful eccentricity”, unlike anything else in the all-too-staid world of classical music. This splendidly captures that ethos.

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Whether anyone has described Bayreuth as a joyful eccentricity I don't know. But Jonathan Carr's The Wagner Clan (Faber, £20/£18) makes a brilliantly entertaining job of portraying the magnificently ghastly family that has squabbled inside that madhouse of fanatics for more than a century. What a creepy dynasty! It's a moot point as to whether they adored “the Master” whose genius gave Bayreuth its unchangeable operatic repertoire more than they revered the Führer, whose patronage gave the place its unchangeable reputation as the last bastion of wishful Nazi thinking. Carr argues the case with admirable even-handedness.

Shorter, and considerably sweeter, Robert Weinberg's An Opera Miscellany (Cyan, £9.99) would make a fine stocking filler for those longing to be told which operas have a goat in a prominent role, or which divas have appeared with the Muppets.

Smaller still, The Music Diary 2008 (Boosey & Hawkes, £5.99/ £5.69) is packed with thousands of snippets of knowledge, essential and trivial. Who wants to venture into the new year not knowing the birthday of Pergolesi, or the correct age of Plácido Domingo?

Bestsellers 2007

1 Proms Guide 2007

BBC, £6

Seasonal favourite that gave you everything you needed to know about last year's Royal Albert Hall extravangas.

2 Classic FM: The Friendly Guide to Music

Darren Henley

Hodder, £9.99

3 Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

Oliver Sacks

Picador, £17.99

4 Eyewitness Companion: Classical Music

John Burrows and Charles Wiffen

Dorling Kindersley, £16.99

5 Classic FM: The Friendly Guide to Elgar

Tim Lihoreau and Darren Henley

Hodder £9.99

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