At this time of year, walk into most bookshops and you’ll be greeted with a tonne of tomes hoping to tie-up that quirky Christmas gift market: books that generally contain material that can be consumed in small chunks: toilet books. I’d usually give such fare a wide berth, but the latest from E. Foley and B. Coates – the women behind ‘What Would Boudicca Do?’ – held my attention for longer than I thought it would. The premise is simple enough: each day of the year is afforded a page, and that page contains a nugget of information. That information isn’t usually about the date in question, but rather stuff like: who was the world’s first novelist; exploring the myths surrounding magpies; the history of the ‘Old Fashioned’ cocktail (and what are those all-important ingredients); why Brussels sprouts are the world’s most divisive vegetable; and who would win in a fight between a werewolf and a vampire (answer: vampire, “as long as the werewolf didn’t have any garlic or a distractingly pretty sad paramour to hand.”). It’s not a book that’s going to trouble the judges of any major literary awards, but as stocking-fillers go, ‘A Year of Living Curiously’ is a good deal better than ‘Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places To Live in the UK’ and their non-hilarious ilk. One bone of contention: it’s billed as ‘365 Things Really Worth Knowing’, but they also include an entry for 29 February, so I make that 366 Things. RM

A Year of Living Curiously: 365 Things Really Worth Knowing by E. Foley and B. Coates, Faber