STEPHEN LEWIS dips into a selection of books designed to help you make a new start for the New Year.

IT'S the time of year for turning over a new leaf and resolving to be a New You. Hopefully, the hangover should have subsided by now (you must have been on a right bender if it hasn't), so if you're serious about making changes to your life, now is the time to make those resolutions stick.

For those of us less steadfast than others, publishers come to the rescue with a slew of new self-help books. They cover everything from how to quit smoking to making better use of your time in the office, losing weight, and taking up yoga. Here is a selection of some of the more interesting ones...

Stop Smoking by Gill Paul (Collins Gem, £4.99) is a handy, pocket-sized guide to stubbing out your habit. It covers the reasons why we smoke, explains in graphic detail exactly what happens when we do (enough to put anyone off), and explains the different techniques for giving up, from acupuncture to behaviour modification to Zyban.

Quitting smoking successfully will still be down to you really wanting to - but this little book will certainly help, especially since it's small enough to carry around with you everywhere, a constant reminder.

Another little gem is the What Diet? by Mary Clark (Collins Gem, £4.99). It covers diets from Dr Atkins to Ayurveda and the Zone, discussing the benefits and drawbacks of each, and suggesting which might be most suitable for your body type. The section on Atkins is the clearest and most concise account of the diet I've come across. There are also tables for body weight and information on nutrition and exercise.

If it is spiritual health you seek, Collins has also brought out, in its Need To Know? series, Yoga by Patricia A Ralston and Caroline Smart (Collins, £8.99). It is illustrated by the usual photos of smug-looking people, but the various postures (or asanas) are clearly described and there is a basic introduction to what yoga is, and what the benefits are. Probably good if you're thinking of taking up yoga.

If you're like me and more interested in getting out of the office as quickly as you can, Leave The Office Earlier by Laura Stack (Piatkus, £9.99) may seem more in your line. Subtitled Do More In Less Time - And Feel Great About It, this claims to be a ten-step guide to getting organised and working smarter.

Laura Stack is a productivity coach, however, which may tell you all you need to know. On dipping into it, this seems one of those annoying books that settles for repeatedly stating the blindingly obvious in prose riddled with so much motivational jargon you just might, on a tired day, mistake it for having something to say.

Get It Together: A Guide To Surviving Your Quarter-Life Crisis by Damian Barr (Hodder, £7.99), seems like a shameless attempt to cash in on a media-created myth (if you're young, free, single and 25 you don't have a crisis, in my book).

Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living: How To Cope With Stress, Pain And Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation (Piatkus, £18.99) has a title long enough to fill a book by itself. It does at least have a pedigree, however, having already sold over 400,000 copies worldwide before Piatkus brought out this 15th anniversary issue. And Kabat-Zinn did use his stress reduction programme at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre.

My favourite of all the new year self-help books, however, is probably The Definitive Book Of Body Language, by Allan and Barbara Pease (Orion, £14.99). It won't help you achieve a spurious state of spiritual well-being, or help flush toxins out of your system - but it will help you to understand what your boss, your back-stabbing colleague or that girl at the water cooler really think of you. Funny and fascinating.

Updated: 09:26 Wednesday, January 05, 2005