But the real appeal for readers may be in the way the writers, by saying no to so much of modern life, impose strict parameters on the abundance of choice facing the rest of us. By limiting their options, confining their experiments to a year, these writers organise the messiness of life.

The recent vogue for year-of memoirs can be traced to Peter Mayle’s 1990 A Year in Provence, in which he moved to France with his wife. Next came 2005’s Julie and Julia, followed in 2006 by Maria Dahvana Headley’s year of saying yes to every man who asked her out for The Year of Yes.

By contrast, many recent year-of books are about the writer’s staying home and not doing something. “We’re such a hyperaffluent society, what else is left for us to do than take things away from our lives?” says Ron Hogan, author of the publishing-industry blog Galleycat.com. “Part of the idea of saying no is a little old-fashioned,” says Judy Clain, the Little, Brown editor who bought Julie and Julia, a year-of memoir in which writer Julie Powell made every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. “We are so overwhelmed by technology, we have so much access to so many choices, these books offer a way to deprive or limit ourselves.”

Perhaps, in following the writers’ attempts to lead lives pared down to the essentials, readers may be reminded of the necessity of finding a way to give their remaining years meaning, whether by not buying tropical fruit in February or letting their beards grow to their knees. “All of the possibilities in a life happen in a year,” says Lorin Stein, an editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “The idea that the year is going to be a productive year, that it will not go unmarked, is really soothing.” And what could be more soothing than a year in which your options are so limited as to almost not exist?