London Design Guide £10 edited by Max Fraser

This is a very handy new book which I highly recommend. It's a guide to the hip and groovy design areas of London with maps, walks and where to get a decent coffee.

It acknowledges that the city is massive and often hard to navigate, but that it has lots of amazing things to offer - and it's a crying shame if the visitor gets off the tube at Oxford Circus and thinks 'Wow. Oxford Street. I'm here, this is it'.

So the book works on the basis that you're looking to scratch the surface a little - you might be more interested in Paul Smith than Primark or Marimekko than M&S - and whether you've just arrived (or have been living here for years and got lazy) it shows you where stuff is and how to get there.

And while it has neat descriptions of places like Dover Street Market, Liberty, the Apple Store, it's not all about shops. Take the Shoreditch and Brick Lane chapter: there's a walk from Old Street tube that takes in a gallery, a church, some radical architecture and ends in a pub.

The book cover, with its graph paper graphics, may have more than a hint of school swot about it, but then after reading this you will be a bit of a know-it-all. Albeit one with an asymmetrical haircut and skinny jeans.