You might lose a few points if it's some Barbara Cartland trash-lit, with a Fabio-type giving off a smouldering look from the cover. And Vogue doesn't quite count as a book either, regardless of how chunky the September issue is likely to be.

But buy a book and, once read, you're left with a useless piece of dead tree. Do you really want to read the Da Vinci Code more than once? Instead, it might be high time to befriend the good old public library again. And if you do, you might just be pleasantly surprised by the innovations since you last visited those dusty aisles.