Books of advice come in many forms: financial, spiritual, physical, philosophical. Novels too are books of advice, if read in a certain light. Eve Babitz understood, for example, that part of Colette’s greatness is that you can open her novels anywhere and “brush up on what to do”.

There are only two advice books I’ve read more than once. One is Tom Hodgkinson’s How to Be Idle (2004). Its title is self-explanatory. The other is J.P. Donleavy’s The Unexpurgated Code (1975). Its title is less so. Donleavy’s book is a send up of the form that happens to be, possibly, the funniest book ever written.