The World's Most Boring

The full title is The World's Most Boring Book About Beans: Recipes, Facts & Other Things You Never Thought You'd Need to Know. It's a funny, British humour gift book about every kind of bean. Beans have been left alone for thousands of years and everyone was getting on fine with that, but here it is anyway. 69 short, laugh-out-loud chapters, a genuinely useful guide to the health benefits of beans, and 20 easy bean recipes nobody asked for. Warning: this book contains beans. Nothing else. Just beans.

Every kind, whether you like it or not. The famous ones: baked beans, haricot, kidney, butter, black, pinto, borlotti, cannellini, broad, runner, green beans, chickpeas, soya, mung beans and lentils. The lesser-known ones: adzuki, black-eyed peas, flageolet, lupin, yardlong, winged and great northern beans, plus the fava bean back from holiday. And the impostors: the coffee bean, the jelly bean, the beanbag, the beanie, magic beans, and the peanut — a legume pretending to be a nut.

No — it's very silly, which is the joke. The title sets expectations and the book then fails to meet them in the other direction. What it will not do is make you richer, make you thinner, or help you find love, unless the love you are looking for is a tin of butter beans, in which case you are already further along than most of us.

No. Please do not buy this expecting self-improvement — it will not make you richer, thinner, calmer, more organised or more attractive to others. It has no morning routine, no five-step system, and no chapter in which the author tells you to wake up at 5am. The only thing it will genuinely improve is your bean knowledge, which nobody has ever listed as a goal. If you want a book that fixes your life, this is the wrong book. If you want a book that tells you why the runner bean has never run, this is exactly the right book.

Reading it, no. Eating what's in it, possibly. Underneath the nonsense there is a real guide to why beans and pulses are among the healthiest foods you can eat, and 20 recipes for putting them in your face. The book itself is still paper, and paper is not a food group.

Disappointingly, yes. Chapter after chapter of nonsense is broken up by a genuine guide to why beans and pulses are among the healthiest foods you can eat — dietary fibre, plant-based protein, iron, folate, slow-release energy, five a day and gut health, plus the matter of wind, handled with great maturity. A bean-by-bean health guide shows what each bean is good for, which makes it surprisingly handy for vegetarians, vegans and anyone trying to eat more fibre.

There are 20 easy ones: proper beans on toast, homemade baked beans, chilli con carne, three-bean veggie chilli, hummus, roasted chickpeas, Tuscan white bean soup, black bean quesadillas, sausage and bean casserole, red lentil soup, bean burgers, chickpea curry, refried beans and more. The author apologises for this.

Bean lovers, foodies, coffee lovers, students, campers and allotment owners. The person who has everything except a book about beans. It's built for Secret Santa, stocking fillers, birthdays, retirement gifts and white elephant swaps — and for the coffee table, where guests will pick it up, look at it, look at you, and put it down again very slowly.

Soon — the book is finished and the Amazon listing is being sorted out now. This page will carry the buy buttons the moment it goes live. In the meantime there are sixteen other books available, including the Wingle Universe and What's The Point When There Is No Point?