The last two books I read, both with white covers featuring smart graphic solutions. Apart from that, polar opposites. Kill Your Friends, first novel by John Niven, is about untrammeled excess. Enough, a non-fiction manifesto/self-help book by John Naish, is about trammelling excess.

The first comes highly recommended by my colleagues at Word magazine, which is unsurprising when you know that the novel is set in the music industry very specifically in 1997, the year that Britpop died (and, coincidentally, the year I left my day job and attempted to put the music industry behind me). Niven worked as an A&R at London records and his main character is an A&R working at an unnamed major record company which is London records. This protagonist, Stelfox, is not John Niven, however, he's an appalling grotesque made up of all the worst bits of all the worst A&Rs he ever worked with, including a little bit of himself, I'm sure. He's venal. He's sexist, racist (he actually used the word "Kaffirs"), misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic. Cynical beyond cynicism. Scheming. Soulless. Sexually depraved. And worse.

It's written very deliberately as an American Psycho for the 90s. I knew plenty of people who worked at major record companies and not one of them was as sexist, racist, homophobic etc. as Stelfox. Maybe he's post-Loaded, and most of the men I knew had their worldview forged before Loaded. Anyway, the book is simultaneously unrealistic - an extreme, Ralph Steadman-esque parody of the worst bits of the music industry - and yet almost painstakingly accurate, using the names of actual bands and real biz contemporaries ("Epic trumpets the launch of the new Echobelly LP. MD Rob Stringer says, 'What a fine act they are. I was very involved with the signing'"). This is totally unnerving, and very effective. There's a band, Songbirds, who are clearly supposed to be All Saints, and yet All Saints are mentioned elsewhere. The musical touchstones come thick and fast, but the whole thing's much more effective if you know the industry and the footsoldiers he's referring to. The effect of reading Stelfox's descent into hell brings on nausea and disbelief. It's like Irvine Welsh, although I'm sure if you were teaching novel-writing, you'd caution against having such a negative protagonist, but Niven is a law unto himself, and has a lot of poison to unload. I feared its target audience might be the staff of Word magazine or anyone who was at the Brits '97, but the customer reviews on Amazon disprove that. You'll need a strong stomach, but it's fascinating to finally see the 90s being documented. And the list of actual bands being championed by the A&R community in 1997 is stunning in its completeness ("This is what we reckon you're going to be buying and enjoying in the coming year: the Beekeepers, Luna, Feline, Proper, Lower, Arnold, the Dub Pistols, the Hybirds, the Aloof, Spookey Ruben, Sally Hardbody, Finley Quaye, Jocasta, Old Man Stone, Ajax Disco Spanner, Gus Gus, Vitro, Travis, Agnes, Monkey, Tiger, Don, Mantaray ..." and on it goes - the list contains just three acts who would actually make it in the coming year: Travis, Stereophonics and Robbie Williams).

Enough, subtitled Breaking Free From The World Of More, is one to gently change your life. Although Naish, a Times journalist, presents his thesis - that it's high time we in the free-market West stopped wanting more stuff before the world actually ends - as a guide. At the end of each neatly arranged chapter (ENOUGH information, ENOUGH food, ENOUGH work, ENOUGH happiness), he gives bullet-point advice on how to reduce the crippling need to acquire, when we've already got too much and don't know where to put it all ("Embrace futility; sideshift; avoid special offers; think in time rather than money").

The graphic device on the cover is a gauge whose needle is bending past "full", but it could easily have been a Big Yellow Storage unit, or similar, the greatest indicator that we have too many things. If I was the sort of who invested in stocks and shares, I'd have put my money in storage, which used to be quite rare when I was a young man, but is now a growth industry, with brightly coloured barns springing up everywhere. Naish is a witty writer, which helps, and has plenty of examples of excess that help illustrate his argument, and he relates everything back to Neolithic man to help explain our urges.

It's the sort of book that makes you examine your day-to-day life. You might not do anything about it, but you will, I promise, start thinking about it. The phrase "enough" keeps popping into my head now. I see an advert for a thing nobody needs and I think: enough. I read a story in the paper about the Japanese currently working on a broadcast medium that will knock HD into a cocked hat, and I think: enough. I recommend this book. And if you have too many books already, why not buy it second hand, or buy and give it to charity afterwards? I'm sure Naish would approve. We're all guilty of buying things we don't need and can't afford. This book slaps us round the face a bit.