488 Rules For Life

Kitty Flanagan's 488 Rules for Life: The Thankless Art of Being Correct is the bestselling comic etiquette guide from one of Australia's best-known comedians, first published in 2019. Growing out of Flanagan's popular segment on ABC TV's The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, the book compiles 488 rules covering nearly every arena of daily life.

The conceit is that this is explicitly not a self-help book: the problem is never you, it's the other people who won't behave. With deadpan Australian humour, Flanagan lays down firm, often absurdly specific rulings on how the rest of the world should conduct itself, turning minor social frustrations into a comedy of manners for the modern age.

Fans of observational comedy and gift-humour titles will recognise Flanagan from Have You Been Paying Attention?, The Project, and Utopia. The book became a word-of-mouth hit, spawning a sequel, More Rules for Life.