Most newspapers and magazines issue their contributors with a style guide. Writers, be they on staff or freelance, then know whether a publication's house style requires % or per cent or commas in dates. Sometimes it's just a tatty sheet of typed A4 but since 1986 The Economisthas developed its stylish Style Guide, through six editions, into a full length reference book.

Because English is such a vast and continuously evolving language—its vocabulary is double that of French and more than three times larger than German—it is open to multifarious use and all the old arguments about correctness or lack of it. The Economistunequivocally sets out its version of what is acceptable and why, usually conforming to Fowler's Modern English Usageand other good guides to getting it right. It also refutes dozens of common errors, stating firmly, for example, that "Data are plural" and that "Any one refers to a number; anyone to anybody."

Since its style guide is set out in such detail, it makes sense to publish it for the rest of the world, most of whom are not writers for The Economistbut who simply want a succinctly witty guide to writing accurately. The first section focuses on minutiae such as distinguishing between a "little-used car" and a "little used-car". It also insists that "to never split an infinitive is quite easy" and, in English so impeccable that you have to read it twice to be sure, that "Frankenstein was not a monster, but his creator." After a section setting out rules governing American and British English this handy reference book provides a miscellany of useful information including abbreviations, currencies, calendars and conversions for metric and imperial measurements. —Susan Elkin

Suitable for both novice home baker and professionals of the crust and crumb world, this book features 90 of the creations of Bourke Street Bakery.

With first-chapter allusions to martial arts, "flow", "mind like water", and other concepts borrowed from the East (and usually mangled), you'd almost think this self-helper from David Allen should have been called Zen and the Art of Schedule Maintenance.

Not quite. Yes, Getting Things Done offers a complete system for downloading all those free-floating gotta-dos clogging your brain into a sophisticated framework of files and action lists—all purportedly to free your mind to focus on whatever you're working on. However, it still operates from the decidedly Western notion that if we could just get really, really organised, we could turn ourselves into 24/7 productivity machines. (To wit, Allen, whom the New Economy bible Fast Company has dubbed "the personal productivity guru", suggests that instead of meditating on crouching tigers and hidden dragons while you wait for a plane, you should unsheathe that high-tech sabre known as the mobile phone and attack that list of calls you need to return.)

As whole-life-organising systems go, Allen's is pretty good, even fun and therapeutic. It starts with the exhortation to take every unaccounted-for scrap of paper in your workstation that you can't junk. The next step is to write down every unaccounted-for gotta-do cramming your head onto its own scrap of paper. Finally, throw the whole stew into a giant "in-basket".

That's where the processing and prioritising begin; in Allen's system, it get a little convoluted at times, rife as it is with fancy terms, subterms, and sub-subterms for even the simplest concepts. Thank goodness the spine of his system is captured on a straightforward, one-page flowchart that you can pin over your desk and repeatedly consult without having to refer back to the book. That alone is worth the purchase price. Also of value is Allen's ingenious Two-Minute Rule: if there's anything you absolutely must do that you can do right now in two minutes or less, then do it now, thus freeing up your time and mind tenfold over the long term. It's common sense advice so obvious that most of us completely overlook it, much to our detriment. Allen excels at dispensing such wisdom in this useful, if somewhat belaboured, self-improver aimed at everyone from CEOs to football mums (who, we all know, are more organised than most CEOs to start with). —Timothy Murphy

Your best friend in the kitchen and bestselling author, Rachel Allen, is back with a collection of delicious and easy cakes and bakes, tarts and pies, quiches and casseroles from her brand new TV series.

Bestselling TV cook Rachel Allen feeds her family and yours with a collection of easy and delicious recipes that everyone will love, plus handy kitchen tips and tricks to make your life easier.

What makes people love and die for nations, as well as hate and kill in their name? In this important work, Benedict Anderson focuses a much-needed clear eye on nationalism as cultural artefact, created and transformed through historical processes—a fated and thus pure attachment experienced every day through the connections language forges with a living and dead community.

In selecting the genealogy of "thinking" the nation, Anderson chooses his trajectory well—thankfully reading not only from the social history of Europe, but also from the experiences of its colonies and other states across the globe (the armed conflicts of 1978—79 Indochina provided the immediate impetus for the original 1983 text). It is especially these states which Anderson's later revisions address, with his wise realisation that so-called "official nationalism" in colonised Asia and Africa was not transplanted without intervention from that of the dynastic states of 19th-century Europe. When dealing with such an emotive subject, Anderson thankfully avoids favouring rhetoric over grounded analysis. He thoroughly explains the role of print language in imagining community, particularly with the development of the novel set in a society to which the reader may or may not belong, but can recognise, and the newspaper, which, perhaps replacing morning prayers, is read every day by people who have a sense of their fellow readers' existence.

The power of Imagined Communities ultimately lies in its applied resonances. The force of the argument of an "imagined community" is not only invaluable to sociologists or political economists, but it implicates each of us in compelling notions of identity and belonging whether our imagined community is with a nation or with others who buy, listen to and watch the same cultural products as ourselves. Essential reading for anyone interested in a history of the present. —Fiona Buckland