Good writers are more drawn to subjects such as love and death than cash flow and beta coefficients, writes LUCY KELLAWAY

‘SORRY TO bug you,” wrote a reader, “but my brother-in-law, a senior banker at Goldman, wants a ‘bad’ business book for Christmas and I thought you might have some ideas. Surely there is an opportunity here for a bad business book award? The sector deserves it. Best regards.”

My first thought was that people give each other pretty odd things for Christmas.

One year, my mother-in-law was given a crocheted flamenco doll with a skirt designed to fit perfectly over a toilet roll, to remove any risk of embarrassment that naked toilet paper might cause.

While it is hard to know why anyone would want a crocheted loo roll cover, it is harder still to know why anyone would want a bad business book.

In particular, I wonder: a) why a senior Goldman banker has asked for such a thing; and b) whether it is responsible to give him one. Haven’t bankers had enough bad ideas about business recently without encouraging them to have more?

My second thought was that, yes, I have plenty of ideas about bad business books and, yes, the sector definitely deserves an award. Every year many thousands of business books are published – most of which seem to be piled all around me in the office, in crates, on desks, on the floor and falling out of cupboards. Of these, almost all are bad, some exceedingly so.

The blame for this lies in both the content and the style. The content is generally unpromising – as the big macro business points tend to be obvious and the small micro ones tend to be dull. The style is unpromising, too. Writers who are good at writing are generally more drawn to subjects such as love and death than cash flow and beta coefficients.

Many of the business books that surround me wear their badness on their sleeve.

Last week a book arrived in the office with the title: Waging War on Complexity Costs – Reshape Your Cost Structure, Free Up Cash Flows and Boost Productivity by Attacking Process, Product and Organisational Complexity.

I found myself so weakened by the title I couldn’t even open the cover to see what was inside. If the authors really want to wage war on complexity, the title might have been a good place to start.

Some books are not just bad, they are dangerous too. Happy at Work, Happy at Homeby Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio has on its cover a slim young woman in a pink cardigan holding a baby who is laughing prettily. With her spare hand she is typing on her laptop.

This is downright irresponsible. Working when you are in charge of children is never happy unless the child is either fast asleep or awake but plugged into Modern Warfare 2 on their PlayStation 3.

A more seriously bad book is Edward De Bono's Think! Before It's Too Late.

De Bono’s view appears to be that no one has done any proper thinking since the ancient Greeks – with the exception of De Bono himself.

De Bono is not the only writer of business books who thinks the ancients have a role to play.

Another contender for my 2009 prize is Socrates in the Boardroom, which turns out to have nothing to do with either Socrates or boardrooms but is about why top research universities should be led by scholars.

I can see mileage in further books in the same series: Socrates in the kitchen, Socrates in the bedroom, Socrates in the downstairs loo. Although all these books are bad, none is as bad as Who Killed Change?by Ken Blanchard. The story is a "witty whodunnit" featuring a Columbo-style detective investigating the murder of someone called Change and who interviews suspects called Ernest Urgency, Clair Communication and Peter Performance Management.

Laboured, tired, moronic and utterly tedious, this little volume leads to the following conclusion, written out in big writing on the last page: “Change Can Be Successful Only When The Usual Characters In An Organisation Combine Their Unique Talents and Consistently Involve Others In Initiating, Implementing And Sustaining Change.”

I don’t know about that, but I do know that Sentences Are More Successful When Upper and Lower Case Are Used Properly. I also know that the reader’s brother-in-law banker would be very happy to find this book in his Christmas stocking. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009