Paperbacks: The Art of Punctuation Ghosts of Spain The Book of Lists: London The Savvy Shopper Below the Convergence Clear Water The Lost Estate

The Art of Punctuation, by Noah Lukeman (OXFORD, £7.99 (192pp))

Like a syntactical phrenologist, Lukeman reads character from preferences in punctuation. Excessive use of colons indicates "an overly dramatic writer... cheap revelations, shocking plot twists". Writers who use too many commas "tend to be repetitive... and give too much information". Excessive ellipsis can be "a crutch whenever writers don't know how to firmly end a sentence". Lukeman is no stern disciplinarian when it comes to rules of grammar. Aimed mainly at putative novelists (he is "president of Lukeman Literary Management, New York"), his book admits that great writers can break the rules. Though under-use of full stops can indicate "an uncensored chaotic manner", this was a quirk of Faulkner. In his case, style "becomes one and the same with its characters, its locale, its time period; a heavy world". Lukeman suggests that the comma is "the speed bump of the punctuation world", while the colon is "the magician": "It holds the audience in suspense, waits until the right moment, then voilà." Oddly, Lukeman dismisses the convention of using a colon to introduce semi-colons: "There is rarely room for both of these giants in... one sentence".

More inexplicable is his omission of the apostrophe. Maybe they don't use them in America. CH

Ghosts of Spain, by Giles Tremlett (FABER £8.99 (437pp))

This portrait of his adopted homeland by a journalist who fell in love with his foreign posting combines telling detail from both past and present. It ranges from sexual practices in the Franco era - women known as pajilleras (masturbators) "came equipped with a handkerchief and a vigorous wrist action" - to the fishy obsession that costs the lives of 20 Galician fishermen each year. If Tremlett occasionally succumbs to the lure of the reporter's cliché ("I wanted to find the raw, unadulterated soul of modern flamenco"), this is a small price to pay for such intelligent insights. CH

The Book of Lists: London, by Nick Rennison (CANONGATE £7.99 (309pp))

From Martin Amis's yobbish Keith Talent to Johnsonian panegyric ("Why, sir, you will find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London"), this trawl of curiosities forms a chirpy collage of the capital. The list of "10 men who founded famous stores" reminds us that Whiteley was shot dead in 1907 while Selfridge died "in relative poverty". The "10 unusual items in the Museum of London" include a Roman bikini and a Mickey Mouse gas mask. Even more unexpected is the museum in Clapham devoted to the Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki, who was "utterly miserable" there during his brief stay in 1900. CH

The Savvy Shopper, by Rose Prince (FOURTH ESTATE £7.99 (449pp))

Prince, a doughty defender of culinary integrity, not only tells us where to get good food (both ethically and nutritionally) but what it is. For example, the natural transfats in butter "do not share the harmful properties of the synthetic transfats" found in spreads made of hydrogenated oils. Combining fiery passion with in-depth research, this exemplary book spills the beans about the unfairness of the coffee market, why big-brand crisps all taste the same, health risks in stock cubes and what's wrong with cheap biscuits (synthetic transfats again). CH

Below the Convergence, by Alan Gurney (NORTON £10.99 (315pp))

The Con-vergence is where the near-freezing waters around the Antarctic slide below warmer outlying seas. Temperature plummets, fog closes in and swells "endlessly circle the continent". This lively book relates the experiences of early voyagers in this daunting environment. After a scientific expedition in these latitudes in 1699, Halley (of comet fame) was said to "talk, swear and drink brandy like a sea captain". In 1773, Captain Cook noted the odd bias among fellow officers when predicting the whereabouts of land: "It was remarkable that no one gave as his opinion that any was to be found to the South." CH

Clear Water, by Will Ashon (FABER £7.99 (326pp))

It's too easy to label this over-stuffed but fizzily inventive debut novel as a dystopian fantasy about consumer culture. After all, it takes place in and around a vast Kentish retail complex. True, one of its multiple leads, a journo drily called "Peter Jones", indulges in such zeitgeist-bashing. But Will Ashon's equally concerned with the secret dreams - of sensual bliss, of love, even of salvation - that underlie our frantic shopping. Buy the satire, get the soul for free. BT

The Lost Estate, by Alain-Fournier (PENGUIN £8.99 (227pp))

Adored by readers ever since its young French author (who would die in the Great War) finished it in 1912, this dream-like tale of a lost love and a magical domain has a seductive new translation by the late Robin Buss. Older fans, though, will always call it Le Grand Meaulnes. Swathed in the mist of the Sologne, haunted by the turrets of the elusive chateau, the story casts an elegiac spell sharpened for many by feelings of private, and collective, loss. BT

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