By Dawna Walter

Penguin pound;8.99

How many people regret the simple pleasures they failed to embrace: time spent with their growing children, spring in the garden, long talks with elderly relatives now departed? Never enough time. Must get on.

Dawna Walter’s central message is simple and true, and so bears repetition.

It is that because life is short, you must make every minute of it count.

This is, in fact, the Buddhist principle of “living in the moment”.

Everyone eventually embraces it - though usually, alas, when it’s a bit too late to try anything else. Then they regret not having relished life a little more in the preceding years.

The way forward, Dawna Walter says, is to get rid of mental clutter, such as the baggage of attitudes and beliefs and habits that you’ve carried and taken for granted since childhood.

These are excellent and helpful ideas. However, Dawna Walters elaborates the message with all kinds of stuff about crystal healing, “negative energy”, the burning of sage sticks and setting light to thank you letters outdoors during the full moon. Some people might find this sort of material helpful, but for my money, putting it into a book about getting rid of mental junk is a bit rich.