1001 Answers to Correspondents, edited by Andy Simpson and James Black (Robinson, £6.99 in UK)

This book bills itself as "the answer to all the questions you never knew you wanted to ask" - and sure enough, unless you're a regular reader of the Daily Mail's "Answers to Correspondents" column, you've probably never gone so far as to wonder why men are sometimes called "blokes", exactly how long a lifetime guarantee is supposed to last, or what the decade after this one will be called (Eighties, Nineties . . . Noughties???) A treasure-chest of British homespun folk wisdom and slightly-past-it-ssell-by-date popular culture - buy it as a present for a know-it-all twelve-year-old, then borrow it back again.