Thanks, readers

Interesting suggestions (keep them coming). I'd forgotten about The Master and the Margarita but agree - it's stunning. I'd also forgotten to list Jane Austen, whose works I go back to several times a year. I'm not so keen on On The Road, though I used to be many years ago. There's just something so self-involved about hippies and proto-hippies. The same goes for Coelho and that whole band of self-styled spiritual gits. They're a result of the 1960s radicals failing to get anywhere. Faced with political defeat, they decided to look inside themselves rather than take the serious choices required to save the world. They couldn't accept the external authority of organised religion, so they made up a load of old cobblers - from Scientology to self-help - and made pots of dosh on the way. I hate it. The only books I'd happily burn are those under 'Mind, Body, Spirit'. Savonarola was right.

Let's be clear, the only rules you need for a happier life in the West are:

1. Eat less.

2. Walk more.

3. Try to be more kind to people. Even students. Not Tories - they deserve a spade through the face.

4. Buy fewer things.

5. Read more.

Did anyone watch Stuart Lee's Comedy Vehicle last night? The man is a genius because he's intelligent, has a sense of the absurd, and is right about the gaping cultural void in our lives which we seem only to be able to fill through the purchase of pointless, empty objets. We've exchanged our messy, tasteless, jumbly, interesting lives for houses, clothes and activities designed to make ourselves indistinguishable from the 'lifestyles' of show-homes and the fake nuclear families featured in adverts. Resist! Swap your plasma TV for a ferret, or a book, or a train-set - whatever makes you happy in your own odd way - and stop worrying about what other people think of your lifestyle.

(Easy for me to say, of course - I'm used to the condescension or pity evinced by students, friends, family when my 'career' comes up).