FROM Schott's Miscellany to Lynn Truss's guide to punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, quirky books have become a Christmas favourite.

And guessing what is going to be a hit is big business among booksellers.

But often the public's choices are unpredictable.

Online book retailer Amazon currently lists its top sellers as "The Dangerous Book for Boys" by Conn Iggulden and "Why Don't Penguins Feet Freeze? And 114 Other Questions" by Mike O'Hare - above Bolton comic Peter Kay's biography "The Sound of Laughter".

And the surprise hit - this year's "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", if you will - is apparently . . . a Latin primer.

Harry Mount's "Amo, Amas, Amat . . . And All That: How To Become A Latin Lover" is climbing the Amazon sales lists thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations and, one suspects, various relatives' growing need to find an increasingly quirky gift.

Tony Grice, branch manager of Waterstones Bolton, says: "It's got all the signs of being a hit. We have seen a bit more interest. It's not really been reflected in the sales figures yet, but we did see a lot more interest in it at the weekend. Every year there tends to be a kind of dark horse Christmas bestseller that comes out of the blue and nobody's really expecting - it was Eats, Shoots and Leaves' a couple of years ago, and this one is shaping up to be the surprise bestseller this year."

In a market currently swamped by celebrity "autobiographies" (more of which later), the appeal of these unusual titles is hard to pin down.

Tony said: "I think it is partly the very fact that they are out of the ordinary. In publishing these days people tend to follow trends, and so when a genuinely original book does emerge I think that is part of the appeal. They tend to be word of mouth successes rather than anything that's marketing driven or publicity driven. They tend to start small and grow through word of mouth."

Another favourite in the run up to Christmas is, ironically, a book that argues Christmas should not exist at all.

Professor Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" is currently number eight in the Amazon bestseller lists, and has remained in the top 10 since its publication in September.

Professor Dawkins said Britons were ready to "think for themselves" and turn away from religion, which he described as a form of mental child abuse.

Tony said: "That's been fantastically successful. It was published in October. Normally you expect a sales peak on publication but that one, if anything, it's growing. It does seem to be shaping up to be a bit of a Christmas present buy as well.

"It is ironic, but I think it's topical what with everything going on in the world at the moment. I think people are thinking about religion and tolerance etc, and I think that's it, along with the fact that he's a respected writer and it's a thoughtfully argued book."

But Mount and Dawkins do have competition in the form of other quirky titles. These include "Why Don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?", a follow-up to last year's popular "Does Anything Eat Wasps?", Stephen Fry's "QI: The Book of General Ignorance", the retro annual "The Dangerous Book For Boys", and "They Call Me Naughty Lola", a collection of lonely hearts ads from the London Review of Books.

And Ben Schott is returning once again with a 2007 Almanac .

He says: "The almanac is something completely different. It's a modern recreation of a traditional almanac. In some ways it's much more serious, dealing with some very serious ideas and some very frivolous ideas, geo-politics and gossip."

With his three volumes of miscellany and the 2006 almanac selling more than two million copies, Schott has found the compilation of his quirky books not only satisfying, but lucrative.

And these titles are taking off at the same time as the publishing industry has expressed concerns that celebrity "autobiographies" are not the draw that they once were. Wayne Rooney was paid £4 million for a four-book series, but to date his "Story So Far" has only shifted 35,000 copies. Meanwhile Ashley Cole's offering has only sold 4,000 after a reported £250,000 deal, while the Blunkett diaries - widely expected to dish the dirt on Number 10 - have sold a mere 1,000 copies.

But Tony says this trend does not seem to be reflected in Bolton.

"They're as popular as ever. It's very different but we're here to provide people with the books that they want to read and people still seem to want to read the celebrity biographies. Gordon Ramsay in particular is doing well, as is Fred Dibnah who has local interest for us. It's showing no signs of abating," Tony says.

So whether it is a guide to Latin or Jordan's autobiography, after the Queen's Speech it seems the thing to do is to settle down in front of the fire with a good book. Perhaps followed by a quick game of conjugate the verb'.