The annual book-of-the-year lists (see here for an exhaustiveexhausting selection) is always an opportunity for those asked to nominate to showcase their taste, erudition, and, in some cases, their lack of both.However, I think the incomparable George Steiner deserves the laurels for recommending, in the December 2 issue of the TLS, the most intimidating tome of 2005. As it’s Steiner writing, there’s the obligatory namechecking of some of the Easter-Island monuments of Western Civ (and he gets double-bonus points for a book not yet translated into English written by someone who is dead):

Sebastiano Timpanaro was a figure of quite exceptional moral and intellectual stature. Philologist of the very first rank, heretical Marxist, penetrating critic of Freud, his posthumous influence has been growing steadily. Much in the collection of his Contributi di filologia greca e latina (Universit� di Firenze) is severely technical. But the identification of scholarly rigour with personal and political morality shines through.

Scholarly rigour! Severe technicality! What more could you ask for during the zombified, dying days of 2005?