Ok, so if you’re running late in the morning, buying your favourite newspaper is the last thing on your mind, and fighting for the last Metro beneath you. But avoiding the gazes of others who didn’t get up when the alarm went off isn’t the best way to spend your journey either. Nor is daydreaming or reading your neighbour’s newspaper conspicuously over-the shoulder (buy your own, cheapskate!!)

Instead, try books – the ideal accessory for that tedious journey and, more often than not, compact enough to slip into your already over-filled handbag and jacket pockets.

Here’s our list of recommended titles:

Titles to make you laugh;
1. The Embarrassing Parents: Social Stereotypes from the Telegraph Magazine
Victoria Mather and Sue Macartney-Snape, Telegraph Books Direct, £9.99,
(Tel: 0870 155 7255)
2. Notes From a Small Island
Bill Bryson, Black Swan. £6.99
3. The English, A Portrait of a People
Jeremy Paxman, Penguin Non-Fiction, £7.99

Titles to make you weep:
1. Ariel
Sylvia Plath, Faber & Faber, £8.99
2. A Moment in Time
H.E.Bates, Penguin Fiction, £6.99

Titles to make you think:
1. The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran, Tiger Books International, £3.95
2. The Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell, Oxford University Press, £4.99
3. Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad, Penguin Fiction, £3.99
4. Down and Out in Paris and London
George Orwell, Penguin Modern Classics, £5.99

Titles to help you escape:
1. The Invention of Dr Cake
Andrew Motion, Faber and Faber, £7.99
2. Selected Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Penguin Classics, £6.99

Titles to make others blush:
1. Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation
Thomas W Laquer, Zone Books, £22.50
2. Multi-Orgasmic Man: Sexual Secrets That Every Man Should Know
Mantak Chia & Douglas Abrams Arava, Harper Collins, £9.99