Insults Every Man Should Know, edited by Nick Mamatas (Quirk Books, £6.99) (From York Press)

Insults Every Man Should Know, edited by Nick Mamatas (Quirk Books, £6.99)

11:47am Saturday 10th December 2011 in Books By Julian Cole

BOOKS such as this come into their slightly silly own at this time of year, when buying presents seems to be mandatory.

Nick Mamatas pulled off a similar trick three years ago with Jokes Every Man Should Know, and now he turns his internet-skimming eye to insults. The format is the same, with a smartly presented small hardback which looks very nice and contains plenty of rather enjoyable nastiness.

Most people like a good insult and there are plenty of them here, a fair few of which cannot be repeated in polite company (almost anything in the section entitled Insulting Someone’s Sexual Prowess).

There are classic insulters, including Dorothy Parker (“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to be bone”), accidental slights (such as BBC Sport leaving the following instruction on its website: “You can become a Facebook saddo” and obscure insults (‘dunderwhelp’ – “an idiot, especially a young one”).

Indeed there is rudeness enough here to entertain a ‘napiform’ (as in turnip-shaped) ‘ninny’ (a naïve fool, as we perhaps knew already).

Books such as this are a guilty pleasure and skimming fills the idle moment. If you want a book about unrestrained rudeness, you are in the right place.

Here to close is an anonymous entry filed under office insults: “He’s in his office, lost in thought. After all, it’s unfamiliar territory for him”.