About this time of year, newspapers and journals publish lists of the best books of the past 12 months - yet these must-read selections often tell you little more than which books were enjoyed by individual editors or readers of particular publications and there is rarely consensus.

This year is no different. The winner of the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award is When Markets Collide, yet this book does not receive a mention in BusinessWeek's pick. Both of Amazon's lists - one for British readers and one for Americans - rate The Snowball as their top choice, yet The Economist fails to be impressed enough to rate it. So what do you do if you want to start the year on a literary note? We have tried to ease the pain by analysing ten lists of recommended business books for 2008 in an attempt to compile a definitive list.

1. And the winner is ... The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, by Alice Schroeder. The authorised biography of the Sage of Omaha appeared in seven of the ten lists of 2008's best business books. However, many reviewers panned it when it hit the shelves in the autumn. The Economist said: “Those hoping for detailed analyses of his investment record will be disappointed that the author focuses so much on the state of the Buffett marriage. This reviewer, for example, wanted answers to several questions that are not addressed.” Yet there are plenty of fans because, as BusinessPundit.com says: “This book is a must-read for anyone wanting an overview of American Business, period.”

2. Two books tied for second place in our ranking, both securing places in four out of ten of the lists studied. One is When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change, by Mohamed El-Erian. The Financial Times said: “El-Erian's serious analysis of the new economic world order has won admirers in every major financial market.” The Economist described it as “fluent and intelligent”. The other, A Sense of Urgency, by John P. Kotter, is, the FT says, an “elegantly written” change-management guide.

3. Three books featured on three of the lists. The first is one of the first books to be published about the credit crunch and although the crunch is far from over, it is already being touted at “the definitive guide”. It is The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash, by Charles R. Morris, which charts the timeline to meltdown.

The next book is not strictly a business book, despite appearing in three of the lists. Its thinking can be applied to all walks of life. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, is a fun look at how we can subtly urge people to do what we wish.

Then we have the first picture book to appear in the lists - Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, by Dan Roam. Fast Company said that this book “opened their minds to new ideas” - the new idea apparently being stick men. This is a book for creative types.

4. Finally, there were eight books that tied with two mentions each. Surprisingly, given that this is a list of business books, one is the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga, which was described by Roger Parry, chairman of Media Square, in Management Today, as giving an insight into Bangalore's business district. It is the story of an Indian boy's “shocking and unethical” journey from village life to big city entrepeneural success, perhaps a fitting critique of our time.

The other seven with two mentions are Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell; The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb; Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, by Jeff Howe; Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely; Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google, by Nicholas Carr; Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff; and The Partnership, A History of Goldman Sachs, by Charles D. Ellis.

The lists we surveyed were: “The Best Books of 2008”, by The Economist; “Books of the Year”, by Management Today; “The Best Business Books of 2008”, by BusinessWeek; the Financial Times's “Best Business Books of 2008”; BusinessPundit.com's “The 10 Best Business Books of 2008”; “Best Business and Finance Books of 2008” (Amazon.co.uk); “Top 10 Books: Business & Investing” (Amazon.com); and “Best Business Books 2008” (Strategy+Business).

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