A year's worth of staff favorites.

A real book lover gets almost as much pleasure from recommending a book as from reading it. The book lovers at The Inquirer are no exception. Here's a roundup of books, most of them published within the last year, that members of The Inquirer staff recommend. A shopping list? If you'd like. A "best of the year" list? Sort of. Use it however you wish, but enjoy.

- Michael D. Schaffer, Inquirer books editor

1Q84, by Haruki Murakami (Alfred A. Knopf, $30.50) 1Q84 requires a commitment: The latest and largest mind-bending philosophical opus by the Japanese author enamored of Western popular culture runs to more than 900 pages. But it also rewards the effort. The title is a play on George Orwell's 1984, and the action involving a stiletto- heeled assassin, an aspiring-novelist math teacher, and a teenage girl escaped from a mysterious cult takes place both in the calendar year and in an alternative world where two moons hang in the sky and gremlinlike "Little People" emerge from a goat's mouth to cause undue mischief. An immersive, page-turning, transporting trip to Murakami world.

- Dan DeLuca, music critic

Arguably: Essays, by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve, $30) Christopher Hitchens, best known as one of the four horsemen of the "new atheism," is arguably the premier essayist of the last 20 or so years. This collection of essays is 750 pages, so it is a book you will come back to time and again. His essay on female comedy, "Why Women Aren't Funny," is a pure dud, but he is brilliant when he takes on an issue such as waterboarding in "Believe Me, It's Torture." Hitchens makes his readers look at the world from the edges, not the center, even if reluctantly. Love him or hate him, Hitchens has opinions worthy of print and not cheaply shouted over the airwaves.

- Michael Plunkett, photographer

Bismarck: A Life, by Jonathan Steinberg (Oxford University Press, $34.95) This new biography of one of the most powerful figures of the 19th century by a University of Pennsylvania history professor shows the man who first unified Germany in all his conniving brilliance. Steinberg offers a close look at Otto von Bismarck's personal side. He was a hypochondriac who never forgot even imaginary slights. It's remarkable that a man with such a personality accomplished so much.

- Barry Zukerman, staff writer