IDS has been trying to justify welfare cuts, Prince George has been given an apple tree and many staff are on zero-hours contracts at Amazon...

Before you stuff your luggage with this year's Man Booker longlist titles, Katy Guest makes a case for some varied alternatives

Counting the cost of GP visits, stand-up diets and stupid hair

The Minister for Women and Equalities will have her work cut out

One of the best pieces of advice my English teacher ever gave me – one which I would like to share with every teenager in Britain – was never to struggle on with a book that you hate. Life is too short for ironing and bad books, as Schopenhauer nearly said, and the world is not short of wonderful literature: the next book you read could be the one that changes your life. If you're really not getting on with a book, please put it down before you really grow to resent it. One day you may try again and love it, but not if your parents, a newspaper review or Michael Gove has forced you to plough through it to the bitter end.

A couple found out recently that the devil does not have all the best words when they were forbidden to "have" and to "hold" each other during their wedding vows. The marriage was a civil ceremony, which has a zero tolerance attitude to religious content. Not that having and holding is particularly Christian, but the words come from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, so were banned along with "in sickness and in health".

Bewitching, at least three times over

When Russell Crowe piped up recently that the treatment of the former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard lacked "gallantry", he meant well but his choice of words was wrong. Crowe was reacting to a menu at a Liberal fundraiser which included "Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail – small breasts, huge thighs, and a big red box". My dictionary says gallantry is thoughtfulness and courtesy "especially towards women", but it wasn't chivalric valour Gillard was after. She didn't want coats draped over puddles; just a little respect and some manners, the same as any Aussie bloke would expect.

Are you a woman? Can you read and write? Then please will you jump up and down so that the editors at The London Review of Books can see you? Finding women reviewers, according to the magazine, is "complicated; actually, "as complicated as it gets".

The protagonists in her new novel are poor, abandoned and fighting back. Katy Guest met their champion