30 NOVEMBER 1991, Page 35

John Whitworth

The Faber Book of Drink, Drinkers and Drinking (Faber, £15.99) is a very fat book, edited with erudition and good humour by Simon Rae. I love the doctor overheard by Martin Amis: 'Some of them get away with heavy drinking', he complains morosely. In your sober mornings you might try Christo- pher Reid's poems (In The Echoey Tunnel, Faber, £4.99), cheerful, clever and not too hard. The best novel I read this year was William McIlvanney's Strange Loyalties (Hodder, £13.99), a thriller and not set in foreign parts, two plusses as far as I am concerned. Bad books? If Don Delillo is as boring and pretentious as Norman Mailer over only a quarter of the space, does that make him better or worse?