THEY say that those who read do not write as much and those who write do not read as much. Since I write every day, every week, every year, come hell or high water, I do not read so much. I might not have picked up anything published this year.

The most recent novel I picked up is probably Khalid Muhammad's pacey Agency Rules: Never an Easy Day at the Office. Published by Dead Drop Books, this debut is the first indigenously published English language political thriller. Although it may or may not be entirely successful, the volume is an exciting development: it portends promise for our publishing industry.

I finally got my hands on another local bestseller, Lesley Hazleton's After the Prophet. Although I am familiar with much of her source material, especially Wilferd Madelung's magisterial The Succession of Muhammad [PBUH], she has produced the most readable historical book on matters pertaining to Islam since Karen Armstrong's opus, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet [PBUH] (though it is more akin to Amin Maalouf's brilliant historical narrative, The Crusades through Arab Eyes).

I have gone through several minor memoirs this year, an underappreciated form that never fails to pique my interest. I came across Omar Kureishi's breezy Ebb and Flow, for instance, at the weekly book fair at Frere Hall in which he traces the arc of his career as a cricket commentator and the history of PIA - 'Great People to Fly With' - to boot. Then a friend dispatched Sadruddin Hashwani's The Truth Always Prevails to me which I read in a night. There is no doubt that it wades into murky polemic waters towards the end, but politics aside it does unexpectedly present a compelling early portrait of an industrious, instinctively astute self-made man.

And finally, I reread one of my favourite novels, Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter. I must have read it nine times before and am happy to report it still works.