Sloth
by Wendy Wasserstein
OUP £9.99, pp128

Of the seven deadly sins, six are now medical conditions and one, pride, has become a virtue. Now a series of books offers meditations on the state of vice.

To tackle sloth, New York playwright Wendy Wasserstein has written a satirical self-help book, a multistep plan to becoming fully inert. 'Sloth gives us the courage to give up searching for self-improvement regimens,' she writes. The idea is that the less you do, the less destructive you are.

Sloth won't make you fat as you'll become too lazy to eat more than the minimum. 'Hate takes energy. Destroying the ozone layer requires industry. Slothdom can save humanity.'

Wasserstein is mildly amusing as she mocks both America's earnest puritanism and its burgeoning sloth movement, but I'd recommend saving the effort of turning those expensive pages. Instead, send a flunkey to rent a Simpsons DVD and revel in Homer, a sloth guru of true enlightenment.