Boyd Tonkin: Fact and fun with the stars of geek heaven

"What are you reading?" asks hippy-drippy Candice-Marie (Alison Steadman, of course) as her passive-aggressive prig of a husband sulks in his sleeping-bag during the camping holiday from hell that is Mike Leigh's Nuts in May. "The Guinness Book of Records," comes the reply. Readers who enjoy an aimless browse in reference books –a constituency that swells by an unquantified percentage each Christmas – have to contend with the idea that this activity may shade into borderline-sociopath behaviour. But, however solitary our dipping, at least we're not alone. In Hanif Kureishi's new novel, Something To Tell You, the narrator – a literary shrink – finds out that his son's favourite book is the Argos catalogue. Now there's a lad after my own heart.

At this time of year the shelves groan with seasonal compendia of fact, some functional but most trivial. In keeping with the slightly furtive reputation of the genre, the compilers of such volumes used to face the world protected by a discreet veil of anonymity. Rather like the masons of Gothic cathedrals, they built their towers of data free of names and egos – invisible servants of a geeky god. No longer.

For years, Russell Ash's Top 10 of Everything (Octopus, £14.99) has cleverly competed with Guinness in the nerd-heaven field of highest murder rates, longest bridges, best-selling albums and least popular US presidents (no prizes for getting that). Now the – well-deserved – Ash cult of personality has spread around the reference domain. Dr Johnson's "harmless drudge" has left the obscurity of stacks or terminals to shine as a cover star.

True, the astonishing Jonathon Green more than merits his prominent name on the jacket of the Chambers Slang Dictionary (Chambers, £30). The most-acclaimed British lexicographer since Johnson has every right to blow off ("late 18th century: to boast, to brag". What did you think?) as he wraps up a new edition of this most mind-bendingly addictive guide to taboo talk. If you're Christmas crackered by the festive grind, a giggly hour with Green may help keep you in your tree.

As for Ben Schott, his Schott's Almanac 2009 (Bloomsbury, £18.99) extends his branded empire of compendia with this latest "informative, selective and entertaining" trawl of the year. Schott sometimes hovers uneasily between cast-iron data (Olympic medals, population figures, Oscars, Bookers and Nobels) and offbeat, quirk-rich lists: Mafia commandments, top celebrity facial features, "most fanciable MPs" – not an empty set, amazingly.

This Schott-ish reeling between usable fact and downtime fancy hints that the glitz-loving "personality" editor can sometimes stray too far out of the shadows. And publication schedules mean not only that (like all early-deadline annuals) Schott misses the US election results, but his table of the "relative magnitude" of stars puts at the very top of its "annus mirabilis" list – Russell Brand, with Gordon Brown almost as low as Gary Glitter in "annus horribilis" territory. Old Moore's Almanack might have done better.

These days, even books of quotations must come to market with well-known names on the jacket – in the case of Advanced Banter (Faber, £14.99), QI maestros John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, with an inevitable "prologue" by Stephen Fry. They prove in spades that the distinction between reference and entertainment has collapsed, with no exact sources given and a preface that styles the book as a "manifesto" for pithy wit rather than a monument of scholarship. For all that, Lloyd and Mitchinson – the Two Horsemen of the Apocryphal, maybe – manage on every page an Oxford- and Chambers-beating ratio of gems to duds when it comes to imperishable one-liners. Quotation of the year for 2008? Thomas Jefferson on high finance: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." Give that man an overdraft.

P.S.Self-censorship prompted by panicky fears of tabloid assault is spreading like a toxin through British publishing. It applies to novels that present family life as anything other than a bed of scented roses. Last year, Little, Brown spinelessly delayed publicity for Barbara Gowdy's Helpless, about an abducted child, because they feared a fuss about connections with the McCann case. Now Orion purports to be "sensitive" by postponing The Mother's Tale by Australian novelist Camilla Noli in the light of "the disturbing and tragic case of Baby P". Note that they choose to make the link. Clearly, we must now pulp all copies of We Need To Talk About Kevin and strip Lionel Shriver of the Orange Prize. It seems that, the more that the rare horrors of disturbed parenthood and ruined childhood enter the public domain, the less novelists can to be allowed to explore these themes. What an abject surrender to mob-think.