As far as trivial pursuits go, Twitter beats any a common-or-garden board game these days – as demonstrated by an excitable thread that began unspooling at great speed last night, aided and abetted by @guardianbooks.

#Lessambitiousbooks may not be the most original of hashtags (it was a steal off the even busier #lessambitiousrocksongs) but among the countless variations on Dickens' Modest Expectations were many beads of brilliance.

Among those that particularly amused were @DrhelenOS's The Magic Molehill and @OnesizePlanet's Love in the time of Man Flu (though Love in the time of the Common Cold has a certain euphonious advantage).

For surreal humour @southpawmojo's The Old Man and the See-Saw and @fairkatrina's To the Lightbulb take some beating.

The prize for techie post-modernity is shared between @paulkingsnorth The French Lieutenant's Facebook Friend and @stephie08's The Twitpic of Dorian Grey, while a note of socio-political bathos is introduced by @Duma365's I Married A Lib Dem Councillor.

And of course children's literature yields some of the best suggestions, including @PattisonJoe's The Lord of the Larvae, @gomiffy's The Slightly Peckish Caterpillar and @Thepoppykat's Where the Mild Things Are.

We could go on, but by this morning the thread appeared to have migrated into Italian, so it's over to you.