Books are always a popular choice for Christmas presents, even last minute ones. Paul O'Doherty navigates his way through some healthy offerings
• Contact Wounds - A War Surgeon's Education, Jonathon Kaplan,Picador, £17.99
Kaplan, the son of a pathologist and orthopaedic professor, has a wordy knack that sprinkles the outpouring of an interesting life within the confines of the harsh realities of guerrilla warfare, revolutionary brinkmanship and perpetual invasions.
From tales more James Bond or Indiana Jones than career-surgeon, that extend from early impressions and awakenings patrolling the kibbutz to exile from South African apartheid, this is a free-spirited diary of an at-times disconsolate doctor fighting the insecurities of his own position.
• A Mind of its Own - How your brain distorts and deceives, Cordelia Fine, Icon Books, £9.99
This little dote of a seemingly lightweight bluffer's guide to the jellied mass at the top of the house comes to the party armed with 20-odd pages of notes and references on everything from "jumping to conclusions hypothesis" to the various guises of "incrimination by innuendo". And while mixing the scientific uncertainty and erudition of hardcore psychology with real-life dramas, Fine's flair for the humorous and anecdotal makes this a delightful read.
• The Health Squad Guide to Health and Fitness, Karen Ward, Pádraig Murphy and Paula Mee, On Stream, €16.99
Featuring contributions from Health Squad regulars Ward, Murphy and Mee, this compact three-sectioned all-in guide to the dos and don'ts of nutritious intake, worthwhile exercise and holistic thought is arguably the best health book on the market this Christmas. From analysing the intricacies of the glycaemic index (GI) to the rigours and puff of the recommended perceived exertion (RPE), this is a modern bible-belt that ticks all the right boxes to healthy living in an informed and easy-to-read format.
• Healthy Dairy-free Eating, Mini C and Tanya Carr, Kyle Cathie, £12.99
This is a useful introduction to anyone cursed with the various faces of dairy intolerance, be it cow's milk protein allergy, lactose intolerance or dairy reaction combining Carr's nutritional know-how with C's native expertise in Thai cooking. Opening with a diagnosis of dairy intolerance, the narrative moves swiftly through dairy-free nutrition, foods to avoid and dairy-free shopping and cooking, to the Far Eastern recipes that are picturesquely portrayed in the second section. Each recipe substitutes traditional diary products with corresponding vegan margarine, soya milk and dairy-free cheese.
• Introducing Consciousness, David Papineau and Howard Selina, Icon Books, £9.99
Beginning with the question of what is consciousness, the authors unravel the nature of one of life's great untouchables, digging in the early dualist philosophy of René Descartes and the ghost in the machine, and then moving the arguments along through Berkeley's radical idealism to the British idealism of Mill and Russell. An insightful little ditty with its picture-book cartoons and scatter-gun observations that illuminates the concepts, purposes, intentionality and representations of consciousness.
• Personal Best - 10 Lessons to help you achieve your true potential, Marc Woods, Capstone, £9.99
This true story of "an ordinary person, ordinary life" begins in the summer of 1985 when Woods, aged 16, is told he has arthritis. Eighteen months later his condition is upgraded to cancer and his left leg is amputated. Six months of chemotherapy follows and having lost considerable weight he enters the National Disabled Swimming Championships and wins three medals. Further success follows at the Seoul and Sydney Paralympics in what is a feel-good tale told as a motivational self-help guidebook that references everybody from Mahatma Gandhi to Jessie Owens.
• The 3-Apple-A-Day Plan - Your Foundation for Permanent Fat Loss, Tammi Flynn, Broadway Books, £8.99
Based on the premise seemingly discovered by accident in the little American town of Wenatchee, Washington - that eating an apple before each meal can be a catalyst towards weight loss - Flynn takes the simple formula a step forward in what is essentially half recipe book and half motivational circus.
With a dedication to her sisters, Tia and Terri, that's straight out of the Waltons, and including photos of before and after transformations of ordinary slimmers that look like crude heads posted on Greek Adonises, the true measure of this laughable exercise is in the section of the book for your own before and after photos.
• The Big Healthy Soup Diet - Nourish your body and lose up to 10lbs in a week, Linda Lazarides, Harper Thorsons, £9.99
Sticking to a soup diet, while not the pleasantest task in the world, does achieve results, and yes, you'll probably lose the 10 pounds Lazarides claims in her long-winded title.
And you'll probably feel the better for it, for a short time anyway.
However, the value or not of this mini all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-soup-but-were-afraid-to-ask compilation, is not in its dietary instruction but in the diversity and unusualness of the recipes that fill out the latter half of the book, from the one-pot extravagance of Hungarian minestrone with shallots and brown beans to the exotic blackberry vodka soup.
• The Busy Woman's Home Spa Book, Liz Wilde with photography by Daniel Farmer, Ryland, Peters and Small, £14.99
This is a two-part coffee-table compilation teach-in on how to look and feel fabulous without the luxury of actually getting away.
From 15-minute manicures to 21 instant rescue remedies to looking younger tomorrow, this is the ideal inspirational self-help for the seriously busy.
• The Holford Low-GL Diet Cookbook - Easy, low glycemic load recipes for weight loss, health and energy, Patrick Holford and Fiona McDonald Joyce, Piatkus, £12.99
The first thing you notice about this addition to the glycemic load pantheon is that Holford's name appears in a larger typeface than McDonald Joyce's - she being the nutritionist and cookery consultant bussed in to bolster the recipes presumably, while GL stalwart Holford goes about the seemingly more important role of marketing.
That said, it's chock a block with all the well-heeled science that has been in the public domain for some time, and the recipes contain cooking notes, maintenance phases (presumably, how you serve it) and succinct instructions.
• The New You - Change your Life in a Month, Anita Naik, Piatkus, £9.99
When you observe that this comes from the author responsible for Babe Bible, you know what territory you're in. The pink cover and 1950s Mills and Boon-type cartoon glamour-wives dotted through the 200-page odyssey offer similar clues. The layout is simple. A problem is highlighted within the opening gambit of a quiz. Such sections include "Get real about your body" and "What's your financial style?" before an eight question guide assesses a, b, c, d whether you're deluded, an energy flagger, healthy or just an emotional eater.
• The Vasectomy Doctor - A Memoir, Dr Andrew Rynne, Mercier Press, €14.99
It's not very often a man walks into your clinic and pulls a .22 rifle and threatens to do to you what you did to him eight years previous. That a patient is on the operating table at the same time, waiting for an anaesthetic to kick in, his scrotum dangling in the hands of you, the vasectomy doctor, as you administer the last rites of potency, is both immaterial and unfortunate.
A minute later you've been shot and you wonder - are you going to die? Such is the story of Dr Andrew Rynne, told with a wry smile by the controversial physician who, since becoming the first doctor to perform vasectomies in Ireland in 1974, has since amassed over 25,000.
This is a page-turning autobiography of the man who, during a lifetime, defied numerous "Irish solutions to Irish problems".
• The Weight Loss Bible, Joanna Hall, Kyle Cathie, £19.99
This is an attractive glossy coffee-table offering from Hall, one of the UK's foremost diet and fitness experts, who's regularly seen strutting her stuff on daytime television.
And although let down by the over-use of Jamie Oliver-style natural posses that has one reaching for the marketing scales, it's also a well-written know-all that's jam-packed with tips for the serious dieter including oodles of easy-to-follow exercises to tone those flabby abs.
• Your Guide to Back Pain, Dr John Tanner, Hodder Education, £8.99
Tanner's demystification of the various stages of dysfunction through to corrective application, in a valuable Q&A style elaboration, among other educational tools, is as good as any teach-yourself back-pain on the shelf.