Ruth Picardie's Before I Say Goodbye (Penguin, £5.99 in UK) is a collection of emails, letters and published articles which over a six-month period chart the demise through breast cancer of this 32-year-old "post-feminist chick". Her account had me chuckling and sobbing almost simultaneously. Her appetite for the banal aspects of everyday life surprises - whether or not she will outlive the current series of ER or outlast her pot of extortionately expensive face-cream. You quickly realise that, for a mother of infant twins, such concerns are the least painful way of marking time. When all else failed the only therapy to give her any comfort was "retail therapy". Before I Say Goodbye is the first book I have managed to read since the birth of my daughter and it has left me with a new perspective. Now I figure, "So what if the washing waits until tomorrow?"